ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGNdev.ecoguineafoundation.com/uploads/5/4/1/5/5415260/... · 2017. 10. 26. · —Dr. Ken Yeang, Architect and Planner, Llewleyn Davies Yeang, UK. Praise for the

1 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y E D I T I O N

S I M VA N D E R RYN

STU A R T C O W A N

ecological

design

w i t h a n e w i n t r o d u c t i o n b y t h e a u t h o r s

VA

ND

ER

RY

N •

CO

WA

Ne

co

lo

gic

al

de

sig

n

ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

Advance praise for Ecological Design: Tenth Anniversary Edition:

“The publication of Ecological Design was a seminal moment for the green buildingmovement, and the book remains one of our most valuable and relevant texts today.Sim Van der Ryn is one of the fathers of sustainable design, but his work transcendstime; together with Stuart Cowan, he has written a work that will inspire and inform usfor years to come.”

—S. Richard Fedrizzi, President, CEO and Founding Chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council

“A benchmark pioneering work that remains vitally relevant today after a decade ofinfluencing the ecodesign community, and now with new ideas and a critical assess-ment of the sustainability status quo in the introduction.”

—Dr. Ken Yeang, Architect and Planner, Llewleyn Davies Yeang, UK.

Praise for the original edition:

“[Ecological Design] is a ground-breaking book that will change the way we thinkabout buildings, agriculture, industrial processes, and our management of resourcesand wastes.”

—Environmental Building News

“Visionary . . . Van der Ryn and Cowan delight in showing us each detail of transform-ing both consciousness and substance from ‘dumb design’ (environmentally wasteful)to ecological design.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

SIM VAN DER RYN is the founder of the Eco-Design Collaborative, the non-profitEcologic Design Institute, and the Center for Regenerative Design at the College ofMarin. He has served as California State Architect, founded the University of CaliforniaBerkeley’s ecological design program, and has been a professor of architecture therefor thirty-five years. His seven books include his recent publication Design For Life.

STUART COWAN is a General Partner of Autopoiesis LLC, which offers design,development, and finance services internationally for large-scale sustainability proj-ects. He was a Transaction Manager at Portland Family of Funds, a community invest-ment bank committed to green real estate projects and sustainable businesses. Hepreviously served as Research Director at Ecotrust.

Washington • Covelo • Londonwww.islandpress.orgAll Island Press books are printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

About Island Press

Island Press is the only nonprofit organization in the United States whose prin-cipal purpose is the publication of books on environmental issues and naturalresource management. We provide solutions-oriented information to profes-sionals, public officials, business and community leaders, and concerned citi-zens who are shaping responses to environmental problems.

Since 1984, Island Press has been the leading provider of timely and practi-cal books that take a multidisciplinary approach to critical environmental con-cerns. Our growing list of titles reflects our commitment to bringing the best ofan expanding body of literature to the environmental community throughoutNorth America and the world.

Support for Island Press is provided by the Agua Fund, The Geraldine R.Dodge Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Ford Founda-tion, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Joyce Foundation,Kendeda Sustainability Fund of the Tides Foundation, The Forrest & FrancesLattner Foundation, The Henry Luce Foundation, The John D. and CatherineT. MacArthur Foundation, The Marisla Foundation, The Andrew W. MellonFoundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, The Curtis and EdithMunson Foundation, Oak Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation, TheDavid and Lucile Packard Foundation, Wallace Global Fund, The WinslowFoundation, and other generous donors.

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author(s) and do notnecessarily reflect the views of these foundations.

Ecological DesignTenth Anniversary Edition


Sim Van der RynStuart Cowan

Washington • Covelo • London

Copyright © 1996 by Island Press

Introduction to tenth anniversary edition copyright © 2007 by Island Press

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Nopart of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW,Washington, DC 20009

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ryn, Sim Van der.Ecological design / Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan. — 10th anniversary ed.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-140-1 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN-10: 1-59726-140-8 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-141-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)ISBN-10: 1-59726-141-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Environmental policy. 2. Human ecology. 3. Social ecology. 4. Biodiversity.I. Cowan, Stuart, 1965– II. Title.GE170.V36 2007333.72—dc22

2007001639

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Photograph on page 2 is of the Fruehauf House in Corbett, Oregon.

Manufactured in the United States of America10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

A Ten-Year Retrospective 2

PART ONE: Bringing Design to Life

Sustainability and Design 18

An Introduction to Ecological Design 32

Nature’s Geometry 50

PART TWO: The Ecological Design Process

Introduction: The Compost Privy Story 68

First Principle: Solutions Grow from Place 76

Second Principle: Ecological Accounting Informs Design 102

Third Principle: Design with Nature 124

Fourth Principle: Everyone Is a Designer 168

Fifth Principle: Make Nature Visible 184

Resource Guide for Ecological Design 199

Bibliography 215

Index 229

PREFACE

ix

If we are to create a sustainable world—one in which we are account-

able to the needs of all future generations and all living creatures—we

must recognize that our present forms of agriculture, architecture, en-

gineering, and technology are deeply flawed. To create a sustainable

world, we must transform these practices. We must infuse the design of

products, buildings, and landscapes with a rich and detailed under-

standing of ecology.

Sustainability needs to be firmly grounded in the nitty-gritty details

of design. Policies and pronouncements have their place, but ultimately

we must address specific design problems: How can we design our

products and manufacturing processes so that materials are completely

reclaimed? How can we create wastewater treatment systems that en-

hance, rather than damage, their surrounding ecosystems? How can we

design buildings that produce their own energy and recycle their own

wastes? How can we create agricultural systems that are not dependent

on subsidies of pesticides, fertilizers, and fossil fuels?

Design problems like these bridge conventional scientific and design

disciplines. They can be solved only if industrial designers talk to bio-

geochemists, sanitation engineers to wetland biologists, architects to

physicists, and farmers to ecologists. In order to successfully integrate

ecology and design, we must mirror nature’s deep interconnections in

our own epistemology of design. We are still trapped in worn-out me-

chanical metaphors. It is time to stop designing in the image of the ma-

chine and start designing in a way that honors the complexity and diver-

sity of life itself.

This is a book about ecological design, which can be defined as “any

form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by

integrating itself with living processes.” Ecological design is an integra-

tive, ecologically responsible design discipline. It helps connect scat-

tered efforts in green architecture, sustainable agriculture, ecological

engineering, and other fields. Ecological design is both a profoundly

hopeful vision and a pragmatic tool. By placing ecology in the fore-

ground of design, it provides specific ways of minimizing energy and

materials use, reducing pollution, preserving habitat, and fostering

community, health, and beauty. It provides a new way of thinking about

design.

This book emerges from two voices spanning several generations.

One of us has spent more than thirty years practicing, teaching, and ex-

ploring ecological design. The other, trained in science and mathemat-

ics, and with an equally strong love for the natural world, is not yet

thirty. Our respective worlds of architecture and nonlinear dynamics

meet in what Wendell Berry calls “searching for pattern.” The follow-

ing pages took form out of our dialogues devoted to this search. They

exemplify the kind of interdisciplinary dialogue that we feel is central to

ecological design.

This book is not a design handbook or a technical reference filled

with detailed case studies, charts, and tables. These details are vitally

important, but our concern here is to give them context and connect

them into a coherent whole. This book grows from the conviction that

people in very different design disciplines are beginning to struggle

with the same questions. Both automobile designers and architects are

x Preface

looking at the entire life-cycle of the materials they choose and are de-

signing in ways that allow these materials to be reclaimed. Landscape

architects and environmental engineers are working together to create

artificial wetlands to purify wastewater. Responding to this shared

quest, this book is a small step toward creating a design process that has

the preservation and restoration of the ecological commons at its core.

The first part of the book, “Bringing Design to Life,” presents an

overview of ecological design. The first chapter discusses the connec-

tion between sustainability and design. The second chapter is a self-

contained statement of the underlying principles and philosophy of

ecological design, concluding with a short history of the field. “Na-

ture’s Geometry,” the third chapter, suggests that we look for design

principles that explicitly link different levels of scale from the molecular

to the planetary.

The book’s second part, “The Ecological Design Process,” devotes

chapters to five design principles that we think are fundamental to eco-

logical design. These principles are intended as a starting point, an in-

spiration to creativity rather than a definitive set of rules.

The book concludes with a resource guide and an annotated bibliog-

raphy for those wishing to explore these concepts further. The resource

guide provides current contact information for some of the most inter-

esting projects and organizations in the field of ecological design. The

bibliography describes books that have been critical to our thinking and

to the development of ecological design.

Our discussions are, of necessity, incomplete. There is an extraordi-

nary proliferation of excellent work in ecological design, and it would

take dozens of volumes to treat it fully. Instead of striving for complete-

ness, we chose examples that best demonstrate the patterns of thought

involved in ecological design. As a result, some fields with a great deal

of significant activity—particularly renewable energy, transportation,

and urban planning—are not well represented.

xiPreface

This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary

contributions of our predecessors and contemporaries. In turn, it is of-

fered to the next generation in a spirit of hope.

Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan

xii Preface

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xiii

I owe a great deal to my students in ecological design seminars and stu-

dios at the University of California at Berkeley. Over the years their en-

thusiasm, questioning, and commitment to finding a better design path

was a constant source of emotional support, friendship, and intellectual

stimulation.

The Lindisfarne Association has long been an intellectual family to

me. William Irwin Thompson, its founder, and the Fellows have been

mentors, soulmates, and constant sources of inspiration. My thanks to

Beatrice Thompson, John and Nancy Todd, Wes and Dana Jackson,

Mary Catherine Bateson, Lois Bateson, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry,

Fritz and Vivienne Hull, Amory and Hunter Lovins, Lynn Margulis,

Robert and Ellen McDermott, Robert Thurman, Richard Baker, and

Joan Halifax. Paul Hawken, David Orr, Jonathan Rose, and my friend

and former partner Peter Calthorpe provided inspiration through their

writing and work.

My work family at the Ecological Design Institute has always ac-

cepted my irregular schedule and preoccupations with patience and

good humor. Thanks especially to Peter Retondo, David Arkin, and

Marci Riseman. Conversations with Michael Katz, Christine Price,

David Harris, and Cherie Forrester were helpful in shaping the book.

The board of the Ecological Design Institute—Marty Krasney, Ranny

Riley, and Michael Murphy—has always supported my vision with good

cheer and sound advice.

Stuart Cowan enrolled in my ecological design seminar in 1992 and

brought a fresh perspective and keen intelligence to the class. A book

had been taking shape in my mind and on paper for some time. I invited

Stuart to collaborate with me, and through several years of long talks

and rambling walks through the forests and beaches of Point Reyes my

shapeless notes emerged into a new form from our joint efforts. It’s

been a pleasure to be in the company of his upbeat temperament, ener-

getic metabolism, and quick mind. Katie Langstaff, a former student

of mine and project manager of our Ecological Design Institute met

Stuart, they married, and Katie contributed her spirit and presence to

our effort.

Sim Van der Ryn

This book would have been impossible to write without the constant

care and compassion of my wife, Katy Langstaff. A fine ecological de-

signer and builder, she has challenged me to feel more deeply and write

more clearly. Her voice and spirit inform every page. Without her

courage, I would have given up on this book long ago.

I am also greatly indebted to my coauthor, Sim Van der Ryn, who

has been an extraordinary mentor and friend during a critical turning

point in my life. Thanks for the bocce ball tournaments, clam chowder,

and hikes.

I’d like to thank my parents for their love and support, and for the

opportunity to grow up with mountain, forest, and ocean companions.

Thanks to Moe Hirsch, Richard Norgaard, and Leigh Palmer, three

teachers of great integrity who have deeply influenced my path. Robin

Grossinger and Elise Brewster have been greatly valued symbionts in

the collective we call Lichen. Thanks also to the Archipelago group—

xiv Acknowledgments

Fernando Marti, Andrea Cowles, and Norm Bourassa—for some won-

derful times and much-needed support. Thanks to our patient editor,

Fran Haselsteiner, for turning an amorphous first draft into a much

more focused text. And many thanks to those friends who have pro-

vided a nourishing context for a difficult book, including David Austin,

Ann Baker, Rebecca Boone, Rebecca Coffman, Nelson Denman,

Nicole Egger, Francis Frick, Helen Hoyer, Fritz and Vivienne Hull,

Aran Kaufer, Richard Kraft, Penny Livingston, Allison and Jenn Rader,

Sarah Smith, James Stark, James Stone, Joanne Tippet, Babak Tondre,

John and Nancy Todd, and Micah Van der Ryn.

Stuart Cowan

xvAcknowledgments


A Ten-YearRetrospective

3

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of Ecological

Design. Our goal in writing the book was stated in the preface: “In or-

der to successfully integrate ecology and design, we must mirror na-

ture’s deep interconnections in our own epistemology of design.” We

sought to understand the interface of living systems and human design

by articulating five basic principles of ecological design, which emerged

from a detailed mapping and synthesis of literally dozens of candidate

principles.

One of the reasons for the continuing relevance of Ecological Design

is that these principles remain critical to creating a more sustainable fu-

ture, and the epistemology that underlies these principles is rich enough

to support a vast range of design innovation across many different

fields. The approaches we explore in this book have become widely em-

braced over the last ten years, which is heartening, but the challenges

have multiplied much more quickly.

The first principle, “Solutions Grow from Place,” states that solu-

tions grow from the unique cultural and physical characteristics of

place, which are so often ignored by standardized designs. The present-

day globalized, highly mobile economy works against knowledge of

and protection of place. All over the world, local groups are fighting to

protect their cultural and natural heritage. The ecological, material, and

human character of place is always the context of design even as the me-

chanical world is busy creating what James Howard Kunstler calls the

“geography of nowhere.”

“Ecological Accounting” is becoming a major force in architecture

and construction through the remarkably successful voluntary rating

system developed by the United States Green Building Council

(USGBC) called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

(LEED™). This system explicitly allows environmental and social

4 A Ten-Year Retrospective

factors, including site, water, energy, materials, and indoor air quality,

to be weighed side by side with financial metrics in the design process.

The growth of the USGBC is a testament to the exploding interest in

ecological approaches to building design. USGBC membership has

grown tenfold since 2000, and now includes over 6,300 companies and

organizations. There are LEED-certified projects in all fifty states and

twelve countries.

“Design with Nature” has found multiple expressions in the last

ten years, ranging from Janine Benyus’s groundbreaking book Biomim -

icry: Innovation Inspired by Nature and biomimicry database (http://

database.biomimicry.org) to Robert Frenay’s Pulse: The Coming Age of

Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things. Living systems have be-

come an extremely popular metaphor, model, and measure for the built

environment, technologies, and even social institutions. Despite this,

entrenched practices in design and engineering continue to keep people

from seeing and applying the obvious, such as designing building orien-

tation and shape to reflect the movement of the sun.

“Everyone Is a Designer” is increasingly being applied by a new

breed of designers who place collaboration with all the stakeholders at

the center of their design process. It also captures the underlying im-

pulse of the open source movement, which allows an entire community

of users to collectively design software, coauthor a document (“wiki”),

or design a product.

Many open source ecological design initiatives are underway. Archi-

tecture for Humanity cofounder Cameron Sinclair recently announced

his intention to “create a community that actively embraces open source

design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all”

(http://architectureforhumanity.org). The Worldchanging Web site

(www.worldchanging.com) provides an international forum for sustain-

ability innovations with the intention of fostering their rapid replication.

Thinkcycle (www.thinkcycle.org) provides an open source platform for

sustainable design innovation for marginalized communities worldwide.

Finally, “Making Nature Visible,” which is linked to the concept of

biophilia developed by E. O. Wilson and Steven Kellert, is beginning to

be taken seriously by building operators and architects. Each building

and site becomes a pedagogical opportunity for the exploration of wa-

ter, energy, food, materials, waste, and biodiversity. In an increasingly

urbanized world, it is critical to make natural systems and processes vis-

ible and accessible for both children and adults. Buildings like Oberlin

College’s Adam Joseph Lewis Center and parks like Betsy Damon’s

Living Water Garden in Chengdu, China offer multiple levels of inter-

action with both ecological processes and the resources that sustain us.

In retrospect, perhaps the most compelling theme of Ecological De-

sign is the search for a unified approach to the design of sustainable sys-

tems that integrates scales ranging from the molecular to global. How

can industrial design, architecture, city and regional planning, and in-

frastructure development be woven together with the capacities and

needs of specific bioregions in the service of a world that works for all?

How can we design in a way that responds to living systems that are

continuously exchanging energy and materials and supporting self-

organizing forms across a dizzying range of scales?

The last ten years have seen extraordinary theoretical and technical

advances in the field of ecological design. Yet the challenges facing the

planet have only accelerated, ranging from the loss of biodiversity to the

rapidly increasing impacts of global climate change. The Millennium

Ecosystem Assessment, conducted by more than a thousand leading

scientists over several years, provides a recent authoritative and chilling

overview of the declining condition of dozens of ecosystem services, in-

cluding provision of fresh water, climate stability, soil health, and many

others.1

There is a growing consensus that we have approximately one gen-

eration to make the transition from fossil fuels, ecological overshoot,

and devastating social inequity to renewable energy, stable ecosystem

services, and the ability to meet fundamental human needs. This will

5A Ten-Year Retrospective

require unwavering political will; massive economic, social, and values

transformation; and a huge reservoir of ecological design metrics, tools,

case studies, and practitioners. Ecological Design was written with the

hopeful premise that even as political and economic forces slowly

aligned with sustainability, architects, landscape architects, planners,

product designers, chemical engineers, and those in kindred disciplines

could develop comprehensive, integrated, and culturally sensitive de-

sign frameworks.

At the bioregional scale, the Conservation Economy framework

(www.conservationeconomy.net) was developed in 2002 by the innova-

tive Portland-based nonprofit Ecotrust under Stuart’s direction. This

research initiative was designed to capture the deep structure—the re-

curring economic, social, and ecological patterns—of a sustainable

bioregion at scales ranging from individual buildings to vast wildlands

corridors. The resulting “pattern language” is documented in a non-

proprietary, transparent way on a dedicated Web site using a wide range

of explanatory essays, case studies, images, references, and internal

links.2 The goal was to create an open source platform for rapid interna-

tional diffusion, critique, and archiving of best practices around ecolog-

ical design and the social and economic factors that support it.

While the Conservation Economy framework was generated specifi-

cally for the coastal temperate rainforest of North America stretching

from Big Sur, California to Kodiak Island, Alaska, it has turned out to

have broad resonance in a wide range of other bioregions. It would ap-

pear that bioregions all over the world share a common challenge: how

to grow a postextractive economy that honors culture and place, re-

stores landscapes and stabilizes ecosystem services, enhances social eq-

uity, and provides diverse and stable livelihoods. The Conservation

Economy framework demonstrates that the principles of ecological de-

sign, applied systematically from the smallest to largest scales and sup-

ported by appropriate social institutions, can allow a resilient, enduring,

and prosperous adaptation to place.


During the last few years, our close colleague Christopher Alexan-

der, an architect and mathematician who originated the pattern lan-

guage approach, has published an extraordinary four-volume series

called The Nature of Order. These books “hold out the magnificent

prospect that there are processes that ordinary people can use, in small

groups or vast collaborations, to create living structure, whether at the

scale of a single hand-painted tile, a city or a continent. These processes

use precisely the same kinds of transformation spontaneously employed

by breaking waves, developing frog embryos, spiral galaxies, or nonlin-

ear chemical reactions.”3 Ecological Design began to apply concepts

from the new science of complex systems, including fractal geometry

and self-organization, to the design process. It will take many more


FIGURE 1. The Conservation Economy: a bioregional pattern language for thecoastal temperate rain forest bioregion of North America.

decades to fully effect this proposed integration. The Nature of Order

provides a kindred path to connecting science and design through

wholeness and “living structure.”

In the chapter on “Design with Nature,” we reported on early ef-

forts to undertake large-scale land-use planning that systematically con-

serves biodiversity. In the last ten years, landscape ecology, landscape

architecture, regional planning, and conservation have shown a promis-

ing convergence toward a spatial vocabulary—patch, edge, core, buffer,

corridor, matrix—and supporting design principles that protect biodi-

versity at all levels of scale. Shortly after Ecological Design appeared in

1996, Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T. T. Forman

published Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and

Land-Use Planning, a highly practical reference for ecological ap-

proaches to regional planning. In 2002, Robert G. Bailey, who origi-

nated the widely used ecoregional classification system during his

tenure with the Forest Service, wrote a visionary book called Ecoregion-

Based Design for Sustainability that systematically applied ecological de-

sign at the ecoregional scale. Bailey echoed one of our key themes,

“Characteristically, conventional design tends to work at one scale at a

time. Ecological design integrates design across multiples levels of scale,

reflecting the influence of larger scales on smaller scales and smaller on

larger.”4

The Nature Conservancy is now undertaking ecoregional planning

in its efforts to protect representative samples of key ecosystem types

and ensure habitat connectivity. Over the last ten years, the nonprofit

Wildlands Project has assisted dozens of ecoregional efforts to create ef-

fective and linked conservation reserve systems, and now promotes ef-

forts to reconnect habitat at the continental scale, including an effort to

create vast linkages along the Rocky Mountains from Yellowstone to

Yukon (Y2Y). The Y2Y initiative “is a vision of hope—of a place on the

planet that will persevere in its full high-mountain richness forever,

while continuing to provide a wonderful place for people to live, work


and raise our families. Y2Y works relentlessly to strengthen relationships

between conservationists, industry and business leaders, government

agencies and educational institutions with the view of working

towards achieving a balanced approach to preserving our unique conti-

nental treasure.”5

In a very different bioregional planning context, the Goa 2100 proj-

ect provides an extraordinary long-term strategy integrating land-use

planning, water, energy, economic development, and poverty allevia-

tion for a global biodiversity hotspot located on India’s western coast.

Prepared in response to an international competition for sustainable

urban regions, the project proposes a “dynamic fractal morphology” in-

cluding a cellular structure of nuclei, cores, spines, and skins; hierarchi-

cal networks adapting to topography; algorithmically determined densi-

ties that optimize human and resource security; and contiguity and

linkage with ambient biodiversity corridors.6 The project also includes a

detailed and economically viable transition to renewable energy sys-

tems, zero-waste manufacturing strategies, and ecological restoration.

The project team has since been invited to work at the state and na-

tional scale in India to extend these strategies.

At the urban scale, the World Wildlife Fund and London-based Bio

Regional Development Group are currently launching the One Planet

Living initiative, which promotes dense communities that allow resi-

dents to decrease their ecological footprint (land area required to sus-

tainably provide for consumption) from over twenty acres in the United

States and twelve acres in Europe to the globally available average of

four acres per capita. Such “One Planet Living Communities” utilize ten

guiding principles: zero carbon (no fossil fuel emissions), zero waste,

sustainable transport, local and sustainable materials, local and sustain-

able food, sustainable water, natural habitats and wildlife, culture and

heritage, equity and fair trade, and health and happiness.7 The flagship

project is Beddington Zero Energy Development, completed in 2003,which features ninety-nine homes arranged in three-story, superglazed


blocks on a four-acre former wastewater treatment plant in a London

suburb. BedZED is powered exclusively by solar energy and biomass,

treats all wastewater on site with a living machine, and offers a range of

lifestyle amenities allowing residents to gracefully reach the global four

acre per capita footprint, demonstrating that everyone on the planet

could live in BedZED fashion.8 At a larger scale, Ken Yeang has demon-

strated the feasibility of skyscrapers that generate energy, purify water,

and provide three-dimensional ecological connectivity. He provides a

masterful overview of this work in his new book Ecodesign: A Manual

for Ecological Design.

During the last ten years, product design and industrial design have

embraced the concept of cradle-to-cradle design. As William McDo-

nough and Michael Braungart demonstrate in their landmark 2002book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, it is possi-

ble to design products that contain only “biological nutrients” that can

reenter ecosystems without harm and “technical nutrients” that can be


FIGURE 2. An innovative sustainable urban plan for the Goa region of India

reclaimed and recirculate inside closed-loop industrial cycles. The

“Ecological Accounting” chapter discusses an earlier version of this ap-

proach, the “Intelligent Products System,” which has moved from ab-

stract proposal to mainstream practice within some of the world’s

largest manufacturing companies in a remarkably short time thanks to

exceptional leadership from McDonough and Braungart.

These recent examples from the fields of bioregional planning, urban

design, and product design show that sustainability stands at a tipping

point of historic dimensions. The design DNA for sustainability is be-

coming ubiquitous and mutating in response to local need. The scien-

tific foundations for sustainability are rigorous. Policy support at the lo-

cal, regional, national, and international levels continues to grow.

Despite this trend, tens of trillions of dollars of capital remains locked

in investments that do not offer sufficient social and environmental

returns. This trapped capital greatly limits the possibility of ecological


FIGURE 3. Beddington Zero Energy Development, a four-acre ecological infillproject in London, U.K.

design approaches reaching sufficient scale within the brief transitional

generation remaining to us.

As the chapter “Ecological Accounting Informs Design” argues,

prices do not reflect true social and ecological costs, creating a “sustain-

ability gap” (price differential) for ecological design innovations. How-

ever, during the last ten years green buildings, renewable energy, sus-

tainable infrastructure systems, and many other areas have made

significant progress toward cost neutrality even within the narrowest

comparison criteria. Systems approaches that connect project costs and

benefits across multiple space and time scales, disciplines, departments,

and budgets can further demonstrate the economic viability of ecologi-

cal design. For instance, based on comprehensive accounting, many

municipalities have recently turned to watershed restoration as a

cheaper form of flood control and water purification than engineering

river channels and installing new treatment equipment.

When a sustainability gap remains, the solution is to recognize that

sustainability is a new kind of value proposition, not a mission to be

worn on one’s sleeve. According to the pathbreaking research of Jed

Emerson,9 sustainability creates blended value (economic, social, envi-

ronmental). Investors seeking social and environmental returns are

drawn to the optimal blended value produced by sustainable enterprises

and projects. It is possible to precisely document social and environ-

mental returns—just as financial returns are rigorously analyzed—and

provide them to investors seeking such returns. The result is a combina-

tion of market-rate and socially or environmentally responsible capital

that solves the sustainability gap by replacing unsupportable levels of fi-

nancial return with supportable blended financial, social, and environ-

mental returns.

By optimizing and enhancing social returns (like living wage job cre-

ation) and environmental returns (like reduced greenhouse emissions),

enterprises become eligible for lower cost, more flexible sources of cap-

ital. Such capital may be offered in a wide variety of forms, including

loans with more favorable terms, equity investments, grants, bonds, and


tax credits. Major sources of living capital include foundations and non-

profits (increasingly using their endowments to support their missions);

pension funds; community development banks, credit unions and re-

volving loan funds; faith organizations; university endowments; local,

state, and federal governments; venture capital funds; real estate invest-

ment trusts; and businesses. By connecting these vast pools of living

capital with worthy sustainability projects, the current sustainability

gap, which is probably between 5 and 15 percent on an economywide

basis, can be completely closed in a matter of one generation.

The principles of “Design with Nature” and “Solutions Grow from

Place” are closely related to linking the continuity of scales that exist

between the living world and the designed world. Jared Diamond

makes the case in his monumental book Collapse that past empires col-

lapsed because their political, physical, and cosmological structures ig-

nored the limitations imposed by nature’s linked scales. Many current

structures in our modern financial, military, and industrial empire can-

not be made truly sustainable because their very structure ignores “De-

sign with Nature.” We can increase the material and energetic efficiency

of such systems, but without a radical restructuring, they can never be-

come sustainable. The most typical example is the living pattern we

have been building over the last fifty years: single home suburbs linked

by massive freeways to clusters of office and industrial parks and massive

shopping malls. You can “green” the houses, you can give the com-

muters hybrid fuel-efficient cars, but you will never achieve sustainabil-

ity because the basic structure cannot accommodate it.

This brings us to the larger question of recreating community. In

David Korten’s compelling new book The Great Turning: From Empire

to Earth Community, he cogently explains the problem: “If we were to

apply living-system principles to organizing the relations of daily life

within our modern context, we would create locally rooted, self orga -

nizing, compact communities that bring work, shopping and recreation

nearer to our residences—thus saving energy and commuting time, re-

ducing CO2 emissions and dependence on oil, and freeing time for


family and community activities. . . . With family life, work life, and

community life more geographically proximate and people in more

regular and natural contact, our lives would be less fragmented and

more coherent, the bonds of community denser, stronger and more

trusting. . . .”10 This is a simple example of what scale linking of natural

and designed systems could achieve toward creating places that are

truly communities.

In the language of our third principle, “Design with Nature,” sus-

tainability means connecting the flows and structures between the nat-

ural world and the built environment at every level of scale. It means

transforming the mechanical into the organic, the layer of large grids

into ecosystems. We may always have global economies, but they

should serve merely to supplement economic activity occurring at the

smallest viable scale (subsidiarity.) Michael Pollan, in his delightful

book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, clarifies for us the difference between

food produced organically and food that is produced sustainably. He

shows that large-scale mono-cultural production with product being

shipped around the world can never be sustainable as compared to the

diversely cropped small farm he visits for a week.

In Ecological Design, we did not make the broader evolutionary and

spiritual case for the nascent field of ecological design, and its larger

purpose and effect. Sim’s latest book, Design for Life, presents that case,

which includes this summary: “The heart of ecological design is not ef-

ficiency or sustainability. It is the embodiment of animating spirit, the

soul of the living world embedded in each of us waiting to be reborn

and expressed in what we create and design.”11 It is a retreat from the

abyss of empire, a Great Turning back to something of human scale that

respects life’s 4-billion-year evolutionary journey.

Sim dedicates this second edition to his grandchildren, who will be

faced with new dangers and new opportunities: Damiano, Luna, Jacob,

Joshua, and Patricia; and to his wife, Gale, who teaches every day the

value of an open heart and mind.


Stuart would like to dedicate this second edition to his wife Katy

Langstaff, who has supported and nurtured so much of this work; and

his five-year-old daughter Sophia, with gratitude for her wisdom and

wild heart, and with hope that her world, and that of her children

and grandchildren, will still be filled with wild places.

Sim Van der Ryn

Inverness, California

Stuart Cowan

Portland, Oregon

September 2006

Notes

1. See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well- Being: General Synthesis (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005) and also com-prehensive resources at www.maweb.org.

2. See www.conservationeconomy.net. This Web site was edited by StuartCowan and published by (Portland, Oregon: Ecotrust, 2002). For the work ofEcotrust, see www.ecotrust.org.

3. See Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order (Berkeley, Calif.: TheCenter for Environmental Structure, 2003–04). The quote is from StuartCowan, “Evaluating Wholeness,” Resurgence 225 (July/August 2004):56.

4. Robert G. Bailey, Ecoregion-Based Design for Sustainability (New York:Springer, 2002), 24–25.

5. The Wildlands Project Web site, see www.twp.org.6. See www.goa2100.org.7. One Planet Living Web site, see www.oneplanetliving.org.8. For BedZED see www.bioregional.com/programme_projects/

ecohous_prog/bedzed/bedzed_hpg.htm.9. See www.blendedvalue.org.

10. David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community(San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006), 295.

11. Sim Van der Ryn, Design for Life (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, Publisher,2005), 127.


PART ONE

BRINGING DESIGNTO LIFE

Sustainability and Design

Two Views of Sustainability

The word sustainability has become a kind of mantra for the 1990s, of-

fering the possibility of balance and permanence in a world where we

experience precisely the opposite. Today, our rapid exploitation of fossil

fuels is already changing climate patterns so catastrophically that many

insurance companies will no longer insure against extreme weather

events. One hundred square miles of rainforest are being lost each day.

Species are going extinct at the unprecedented rate of three per hour.

Chemicals once thought relatively harmless to humans are turning out

to affect immune and endocrine systems. The list of environmental

damage is endless, from the depleted soils of the cornbelt to the vast in-

dustrial disaster zones of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

In search of comfort, convenience, and material wealth, we have begun

to sacrifice not only our own health, but also the health of all species.

We are starting to exhaust the capacity of the very systems that sustain

us, and now we must deal with the consequences.

In this context, the emergence of the sustainability movement is

deeply inspiring, for it potentially offers a holistic response to the envi-

ronmental crisis that makes much-needed connections between nature,

culture, values, power relationships, and technology. In the face of

overwhelming change, sustainability is an idea that absorbs our genuine

hope to create cultures and places with enough integrity to persist for

our grandchildren and beyond.

A huge literature on sustainability has developed over the past ten

years, offering analysis after analysis of the lack of sustainability in both

the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Various underlying causes

are invoked, including capitalism, Christianity, colonialism, develop-

ment, the population explosion, science and technology, and patriar-

chal culture.1 These diagnoses are valuable, and all have considerable

19

20 Bringing Design to Life

merit, yet they largely fail to deliver the particulars involved in making

the transition to a more sustainable world. Instead, we are left with

hopeful, but vague, policy statements.

Sustainability is not a single movement or approach. It is as varied as

the communities and interests currently grappling with the issues it

raises. The shape that it will take is being contested now, and the stakes

are high. On the one hand, sustainability is the province of global poli-

cymakers and environmental experts flying at thirty-five thousand feet

from conference to conference. On the other hand, sustainability is also

the domain of grassroots environmental and social groups, indigenous

peoples preserving traditional practices, and people committed to

changing their own communities.

The environmental educator David W. Orr calls these two ap-

proaches technological sustainability and ecological sustainability. While

both are coherent responses to the environmental crisis, they are far

apart in their specifics. Technological sustainability, which seems to get

most of the airtime, may be characterized this way: “Every problem has

either a technological answer or a market solution. There are no dilem-

mas to be avoided, no domains where angels fear to tread.”2 It is about

expert interventions in which the planet’s medical symptoms are care-

fully stabilized through high-profile international agreements and so-

phisticated management techniques. Ecological sustainability, in con-

trast, “is the task of finding alternatives to the practices that got us into

trouble in the first place; it is necessary to rethink agriculture, shelter,

energy use, urban design, transportation, economics, community pat-

terns, resource use, forestry, the importance of wilderness, and our cen-

tral values.”3 While the two approaches have important points of con-

tact, including a shared awareness of the extent of the global

environmental crisis, they embody two very different visions of a sus-

tainable society.

The proponents of technological sustainability assert that a funda-

mental change in direction is not necessary. For an example of this ap-

proach we need look no further than the highly influential 1987 report

of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our

Common Future. According to the report, “Sustainable development is

development that meets the needs of the present without compromis-

ing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”4 This

definition is bland but superficially appealing, for it at least makes refer-

ence to the future inhabitants of the planet. It is deliberately phrased as

unobtrusively as possible. Unfortunately, it begs a number of critical

questions: What constitutes a need? Given our uncertainties about liv-

ing systems, can we guarantee that this generation’s actions will still

leave viable ecosystems for future generations?

On reading Our Common Future more carefully, we find that sus-

tainability is to be attained by “more rapid economic growth in both in-

dustrial and developing countries, freer market access for the products

of developing countries, lower interest rates, greater technology trans-

fer, and significantly larger capital flows.”5 This prescription implies a

highly technical approach based on more and better management and

technology.

A generation ago, many of society’s most powerful voices denied any

alternative to a cornucopian spiral of material, technological, and eco-

nomic expansion. Now these same voices seem to be embracing sus-

tainability and sustainable development—terms that suggest the accept-

ance of limits and the recognition that our material wealth and physical

well-being depend on nature’s own health. Has the underlying assump-

tion that everything can be measured and controlled changed, or has

our hubris simply expanded to include the notion that we can manage

all of nature in a way that is “more sustainable”? Is technological sus-

tainability simply a kinder, gentler form of reductionism in which we do

a more efficient job of using up, accounting for, and managing nature?

Some very disturbing assumptions lurk behind the utopian vision

of sustainability via global ecological management. We need to ques-

tion both our choice of managers and the knowledge informing the

21Sustainability and Design

managers’ decisions. The development critic Wolfgang Sachs observes

that the satellite images so critical to global environmental management

construct

a reality that contains mountains of data, but no people. The data do not

explain why the Tuaregs are driven to exhaust their water-holes, or what

makes Germans so obsessed with high speed on freeways; they do not

point out who owns the timber shipped from the Amazon or which in-

dustry flourishes because of a polluted Mediterranean sea; and they are

mute about the significance of forest trees for Indian tribals or what water

means to an Arab country. In short, they provide a knowledge which is

faceless and placeless; an abstraction that carries a considerable cost: it

consigns the realities of culture, power and virtue to oblivion.6

One reason technological sustainability is compelling is that it seems

to fit well into existing structures of power. “Sustainable development”

is already being used to justify a wide variety of conventional large-scale

development schemes. In the case of the Narmada Dam project in In-

dia, this language has been invoked to justify the forced dislocation of

tens of thousands of traditional villagers so that electricity may become

marginally cheaper for urban dwellers and huge industrial customers.

According to a recent article in The Ecologist, “Both those resisting and

those defending the Narmada Valley Project use the language of social

justice and sustainable development, and both lobbies have justified

their stance with cost-benefit analyses and grassroots mobilization.”7

Technological sustainability looks to a new group of experts to fine-

tune the global interface between people and the biosphere, and in the

process, it often neglects the details of culture and community while

displaying a rather naive optimism concerning our ability to manage

planetary systems.

Ecological sustainability, in contrast, embraces assumptions very dif-

ferent from the thinly veiled business-as-usual optimism of Our Com-

mon Future. It requires limits to technology, limits to material wants,

limits to the stress placed on the biosphere, and limits to hubris.


Four of David W. Orr’s characteristics of ecological sustainability are

worth summarizing here.8 First, people are finite and fallible. The hu-

man ability to comprehend and manage scale and complexity has limits.

Thinking too big can make our human limitations a liability rather than

an asset. Second, a sustainable world can be redesigned and rebuilt only

from the bottom up. Locally self-reliant and self-organized communi-

ties are the building blocks for change. Third, traditional knowledge

that coevolves out of culture and place is a critical asset. It needs to be

preserved, restored, and used. Fourth, the true harvest of evolution is

encoded in nature’s design. Nature is more than a bank of resources to

draw on: it is the best model we have for all the design problems we

face.

These characteristics imply that the only long-term approach to

building a sustainable world is to redesign the details of the products,

buildings, and landscapes around us. Such redesign—attending care-

fully to scale, community self-reliance, traditional knowledge, and the

wisdom of nature’s own designs—requires patience and humility. It is a

search for the nitty-gritty design details of a sustainable culture, one

grounded in the texture of our everyday lives.

The Design Connection

The most significant change in architecture over the last century has been

the growing dependence of homes on centralized technological infra-

structures for the provision of food, fuel, water, and building materi-

als. . . . One BTU in twelve of world energy production is used to heat

and cool the U.S. building stock. . . . On average it takes as much energy

to heat and cool the U.S. building stock for three years as it took to build

it in the first place. Home furnaces are the largest source of air pollution

after automobiles. . . . An average house uses between 150 and 200 gal-

lons of water per inhabitant per day. . . . All water used in buildings, no

matter for what purpose, exits as sewage. Our water and sewage systems

are coupled in series. We quite literally defecate in our water systems in

the name of personal hygiene. . . . The average home produces 4.5


pounds of garbage per person per day, or anywhere from 2.5 to 5 tons per

year. Fibers, plastics, paper, wood, glass, metal and food scraps are usually

all thrown in the same trash bin. A lot of highly organized materials in the

input channels are combined in one “noisy” exit channel and dumped;

disorder or entropy is maximized.

sean wellesley-miller, “Towards a Symbiotic Architecture”9

For our purposes, let us define design as the intentional shaping of

matter, energy, and process to meet a perceived need or desire. Design

is a hinge that inevitably connects culture and nature through ex-

changes of materials, flows of energy, and choices of land use. By this

definition, architects, landscape architects, and city planners are clearly

designers, but so are farmers, chemical engineers, industrial designers,

interior decorators, and many others. All are involved in shaping the

physical details of our daily experience.

The everyday world of buildings, artifacts, and domesticated land-

scapes is a designed world, one shaped by human purpose. The physical

form of this world is a direct manifestation of what is most valued in our

culture. According to this criterion, the complex array of information

needed to build a skyscraper counts as valid knowledge while the

equally sophisticated information needed to grow food without pesti-

cides may not. Philosophers call a filter that determines what counts as

knowledge an epistemology. Tomatoes, flush toilets, cars, nuclear-power

plants, culverts, and suburbs each embody an epistemology in which

environmental concerns may or may not play an explicit role. By eating

a tomato, flushing the toilet, driving a car, or turning on a light we are

drawn into the corresponding epistemology.

In many ways, the environmental crisis is a design crisis. It is a conse-

quence of how things are made, buildings are constructed, and land-

scapes are used. Design manifests culture, and culture rests firmly on

the foundation of what we believe to be true about the world. Our

present forms of agriculture, architecture, engineering, and industry are

derived from design epistemologies incompatible with nature’s own. It


is clear that we have not given design a rich enough context. We have

used design cleverly in the service of narrowly defined human interests

but have neglected its relationship with our fellow creatures. Such my-

opic design cannot fail to degrade the living world, and, by extension,

our own health.

If we believe we can sever our design decisions from their ecological

consequences, we will design accordingly. We will consistently find, in

the words of Wendell Berry, a “solution that causes a ramifying series of

new problems, the only limiting criterion being, apparently, that the

new problems should arise beyond the purview of the expertise that

produced the solution.”10 Thus, while pesticides may partially curb the

immediate problem—an abundance of pests—they often create a chain

of new problems left unconsidered by those who design pesticides.

These problems are large and diffuse, including the exposure of farm-

workers to carcinogens, polluted groundwater, and impacts on the ben-

eficial birds and insects that might have kept the pests in check in the

first place.

Over the past fifty years, we have reduced a complex and diverse

landscape into an asphalt network stitched together from coast to coast

out of a dozen or so crude design “templates.” The poverty of the in-

dustrial imagination is manifested in the limited number of templates

used to meet every imaginable need. There are strip malls, mini-malls,

regional malls, industrial parks, edge cities, detached single-family

homes, townhouses, and sealed highrises, all hooked up with an envi-

ronmentally devastating infrastructure of roads, highways, storm and

sanitary sewers, power lines, and the rest.11 The pattern of these tem-

plates has become the pattern of our everyday experience, insinuating

itself into our own awareness of place and nature.

City planners, engineers, and other design professionals have gotten

trapped in standardized solutions that require enormous expenditures

of energy and resources to implement. These standard templates, avail-

able as off-the-shelf recipes, are unconsciously adopted and replicated


on a vast scale. The result might be called dumb design: design that fails

to consider the health of human communities or of ecosystems, let

alone the prerequisites of creating an actual place.

Dumb design is wasteful of energy and resources. It is polluting, ex-

travagant, and profoundly dangerous. Unfortunately, we are sur-

rounded by it. We have let dumb design come to dominate the scene

because we lacked the words and awareness to fight it. We have been

late to acknowledge that the environmental crisis is also a crisis of de-

sign, and slow to generate forms of knowledge and policies that might

favor more sensible kinds of design. We have created sterile places be-

cause we have not honored the small, constant acts of compassion re-

quired to care for the living world.

On the other hand, if we build a rich enough set of ecological con-

cerns into the very epistemology of design, we may create a coherent

response to the environmental crisis. In Germany, manufacturers are

now required by law to either take back and recycle old packaging or

pay a steep tax. This has transformed the epistemology of the German

packaging industry. Now new questions occur in the packaging design

process: How can durability and reuse be designed into the packaging?

How can easy disassembly of packaging components to facilitate recy-

cling be designed into the packaging? These questions have triggered

extraordinary innovations in reusable or recyclable packaging with cor-

responding environmental benefits including decreased waste and use

of virgin materials. In contrast, dumb design doesn’t ask the right ques-

tions. It blindly optimizes with respect to cost or convenience while ne-

glecting environmental considerations.

If the assumptions underlying our agriculture include maximum

productivity and minimum workers per acre, monoculture, cheap fuel

and fertilizer, infinite availability of soil, and the irrelevance of negative

health effects from pesticides, we will use our land much as we do in the

American Midwest. These assumptions were taken to their logical ex-

treme in a 1970 National Geographic article, “The Revolution in Amer-


ican Agriculture,” which included a two-page illustration of life on the

farm in the early twenty-first century. The caption says it all: “Grain-

fields stretch like fairways and cattle pens resemble high-rise apart-

ments. . . . Attached to a modernistic farmhouse, a bubble-topped con-

trol tower hums with a computer, weather reports, and a farm-price

ticker tape . . . a jet-powered helicopter sprays insecticides. . . . Across a

service road, conical mills blend feed for beef cattle, fattening in multi-

level pens that conserve ground space. Tubes carry the feed to be me-

chanically distributed.”12 The U.S. Department of Agriculture pro-

duced this particular projection without any apparent ironic intent.

Changing the assumptions underlying agriculture—the epistemol-

ogy of farming—clearly produces a different result. Small organic farms

are beginning to flourish again by minimizing inputs of fuel and fertil-

izer; providing healthy working conditions; diversifying crops to give

protection against weeds, pests, and diseases; and conserving soil. If

we view the growing of food as a design problem embedded in a wider

cultural and ecological context, it begins to echo other design prob-

lems. Many of the same considerations that inform ecologically sound

agriculture also inform the design of sound packaging systems, the de-

sign of sane energy systems, or the design of environmentally sensitive

buildings.

The case of architecture is typical. For most of this century, architec-

tural design has been informed by the metaphor of the machine. At

best, nature is seen as a picturesque backdrop to the dominant form,

the piece of architecture itself, representing an expression of unfettered

creative will. Mies Van Der Rohe’s Farnsworth House just outside of

Chicago, which has influenced generations of modernist architects, is

an example of a pristine technological statement that draws its power

from appearing to be abstractly placed in its Midwest riparian setting.

The landscape seems undisturbed. The floor and roof plans hover above

the floodplain, raised on precise steel columns painted white. The trees

on the riverbank are reflected in the ceiling-to-floor glass. The house is


an object that draws its power from its spartan machinelike quality jux-

taposed against its verdant natural setting.

Much of what architects have designed since the invention of the

camera and of architectural magazines is heavily influenced by images,

by surface rather than depth. Architects sometimes boast of the build-

ings they have designed without ever visiting the site. The exhibit halls

in our leading architecture schools are filled with student projects con-

sisting of models of buildings that seem to respond only to a cryptic

logic of their own. Architecture is sometimes taught and envisioned as

though sites were interchangeable background slides projected behind

the manmade object.

The Farnsworth House is an example of the best that the metaphor

of the machine has produced in relation to nature. At its worst, the

metaphor of the machine allows us to see nature as a passive and mal-

leable resource, ready to be refashioned into useful products. We have

only to look at the millions of acres of wetlands, hills, forests, and farm-

lands that are converted to urban and suburban uses every year in order

to comprehend the dominant attitude toward natural landscapes and

places.

Before the energy crises of the 1970s, architects went about their

work without possessing any vocabulary for the environmental impacts

intrinsic to buildings. Such impacts were invisible because the prevail-

ing architectural epistemology considered buildings as abstract, static

forms with no internal living processes and no significant exchanges

with the larger environment. There was no way to talk about the energy

required to manufacture and transport building materials or about the

building’s climate responsiveness. As a result, these factors played no

role in the design process, and the underlying epistemology was mani-

fested in grotesquely inefficient buildings.

Unfortunately, at most universities it is still possible to earn a mas-

ter’s degree in architecture without knowing how the sun moves

through the sky, without being aware of energy or resource use in

buildings, without constructing anything, and without taking a course


in environmental science. This tells us what counts for valid knowledge

in the architectural profession and helps explain why 40 percent of the

energy consumption in the United States can be traced to building con-

struction, materials, and maintenance.

Despite these continuing trends, recent efforts by the American In-

stitute of Architects (AIA) and many committed individual architects

are moving toward a more environmentally nuanced architectural epis-

temology. For example, in the Croxton Collaborative’s recent renova-

tion of the Audubon building in New York City, a rich set of environ-

mental criteria guided the design process.13 Attempts were made to

salvage as many building materials as possible during the construction

process, to design the renovated building itself to be easily recyclable,

to maximize daylighting and passive solar heating, to use nontoxic

paints and finishes, and to facilitate the recycling of office materials dur-

ing the entire life of the building. These criteria, used flexibly and cre-

atively, brought in an environmentally sound building at just a few per-

cent over the cost of a standard renovation.

If we are to take sustainability seriously, we must admit to ourselves

that the emperor has no clothes: conventional design is failing because

its epistemology is flawed. Gas courses into the tank, the dials spin

‘round on the pump—this much is visible and immediate. What is less

visible is the climate change being induced by the rapid and widescale

use of fossil fuels. In the same way, farming practices that do not ac-

count for the health of water or soil, industrial processes that produce

vast quantities of known carcinogens, and buildings that deplete re-

sources and off-gas formaldehyde can be designed only within environ-

mentally impoverished epistemologies.

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson

pursued a similar theme: “You decide that you want to get rid of the

byproducts of human life and that Lake Erie will be a good place to put

them. You forget that the eco-mental system called Lake Erie is a part of

your wider eco-mental system—and that if Lake Erie is driven insane,

its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and


experience.”14 Some even speak of the ecological unconscious, the

deep, unacknowledged pain we feel for the ecological destruction all

around us.15

The Farallones Institute Rural Center in Occidental, California, was

once issued a citation for using improperly pasteurized milk from an

“unauthorized source”: its cow! In the same vein, the California De-

partment of Transportation calls pedestrians “non-motorized units.”

Those of us who belong to industrial societies have come to utterly de-

pend on far-flung sources for the basics of life. We have learned not to

ask too many questions about how these basics are provided to us. We

have individually and collectively denied the interdependence of nature

and culture. The tragedy is that dumb design has provided so little of

enduring value at such a great environmental and social cost. The in-

dustrialized world, with its science, technology, and borrowed afflu-

ence, has developed by denying wholeness within the art of living.

We need to ask questions, to intervene, to render visible what has so

long been hidden from public discussion: that sustainability, or its lack,

is inseparable from the particular characteristics of the objects, build-

ings, and landscapes we design. What is an appropriate level of density

for a town? How can land-use patterns be made more conducive to the

needs of wildlife? The details of design give a new tool for understand-

ing and implementing sustainability.

We can learn a great deal by moving beyond abstract statements of

policy toward the particulars of design. It is here, at the level of actual

farms, buildings, or manufacturing processes, that relationships of cul-

ture and nature are thrown in sharp relief. It is here that the contours of

a sustainable world become definable.

Notes

1. The literature on the global environmental crisis is truly bewildering.Marxists blame capitalists, and capitalists blame market inefficiencies. Some,


like Paul Ehrlich, see the population explosion as a driving force, while othersview it as an effect of political and economic inequities. Scientists blame a lackof scientific knowledge among decision makers; others see science as the prob-lem. In this book, we limit ourselves to the connection between design and sus-tainability.

2. David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Post-modern World (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1992), 24.

3. Ibid.4. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common

Future (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 43.5. Ibid., 89.6. Wolfgang Sachs, “Global Ecology and the Shadow of ‘Development,’”

in Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (Lon-don: Zed Books, 1993), 19.

7. Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, “Grassroots Resistance to Sus-tainable Development: Lessons from the Banks of the Narmada,” The Ecologist22, no. 2 (March–April 1992): 45–51.

8. Orr, Ecological Literacy, 29–38.9. Sean Wellesley-Miller, “Towards a Symbiotic Architecture,” in Earth’s

Answer: Explorations of Planetary Culture at the Lindisfarne Conferences, ed.Michael Katz, William P. Marsh, and Gail Gordon Thompson (New York:Harper & Row, 1977), 82–3.

10. Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agri-cultural (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981), 135.

11. For more details on this kind of nowhere design; see Joel Garreau, EdgeCity: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1991), and James Kun-stler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-MadeLandscape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).

12. Jules Billard, “The Revolution in American Agriculture,” National Geo-graphic 137, no. 2 (February 1970): 184–5.

13. See National Audubon Society and Croxton Collaborative, Architects,Audubon House: Building the Environmentally Responsible, Energy-Efficient Of-fice (New York: John Wiley & Sons), 1994.

14. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: BallantineBooks, 1972), 484.

15. See, especially, Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth (New York: Si-mon & Schuster), 1992.


An Introduction toEcological Design

33

Overview

We live in two interpenetrating worlds. The first is the living world,

which has been forged in an evolutionary crucible over a period of four

billion years. The second is the world of roads and cities, farms and arti-

facts, that people have been designing for themselves over the last few

millennia. The condition that threatens both worlds—unsustainabil-

ity—results from a lack of integration between them.

Now imagine the natural world and the humanly designed world

bound together in intersecting layers, the warp and woof that make up

the fabric of our lives. Instead of a simple fabric of two layers, it is made

up of dozens of layers with vastly different characteristics. How these

layers are woven together determines whether the result will be a coher-

ent fabric or a dysfunctional tangle.

We need to acquire the skills to effectively interweave human and

natural design. The designed mess we have made of our neighbor-

hoods, cities, and ecosystems owes much to the lack of a coherent phi-

losophy, vision, and practice of design that is grounded in a rich under-

standing of ecology. Unfortunately, the guiding metaphors of those

who shape the built environment still reflect a nineteenth-century epis-

temology. Until our everyday activities preserve ecological integrity by

design, their cumulative impact will continue to be devastating.

Thinking ecologically about design is a way of strengthening the

weave that links nature and culture. Just as architecture has traditionally

concerned itself with problems of structure, form, and aesthetics, or as

engineering has with safety and efficiency, we need to consciously culti-

vate an ecologically sound form of design that is consonant with the

long-term survival of all species. We define ecological design as “any

form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by

integrating itself with living processes.” This integration implies that


the design respects species diversity, minimizes resource depletion, pre-

serves nutrient and water cycles, maintains habitat quality, and attends

to all the other preconditions of human and ecosystem health.

Ecological design explicitly addresses the design dimension of the

environmental crisis. It is not a style. It is a form of engagement and

partnership with nature that is not bound to a particular design profes-

sion. Its scope is rich enough to embrace the work of architects rethink-

ing their choices of building materials, the Army Corps of Engineers re-

formulating its flood-control strategy, and industrial designers

curtailing their use of toxic compounds. Ecological design provides a

coherent framework for redesigning our landscapes, buildings, cities,

and systems of energy, water, food, manufacturing, and waste.

Ecological design is simply the effective adaptation to and integra-

tion with nature’s processes. It proceeds from considerations of health

and wholeness, and tests its solutions with a careful accounting of their

full environmental impacts. It compels us to ask new questions of each

design: Does it enhance and heal the living world, or does it diminish it?

Does it preserve relevant ecological structure and process, or does it de-

grade it?

We are just beginning to make a transition from conventional forms

of design, with the destructive environmental impacts they entail, to

ecologically sound forms of design. There are now sewage treatment

plants that use constructed marshes to simultaneously purify water, re-

claim nutrients, and provide habitat. There are agricultural systems that

mimic natural ecosystems and merge with their surrounding land-

scapes. There are new kinds of industrial systems in which the waste

streams from one process are designed to be useful inputs to the next,

thus minimizing pollution. There are new kinds of nontoxic paints,

glues, and finishes. Such examples are now rapidly multiplying, and

they play an important role in the chapters that follow.

We have already made dramatic progress in many areas by substitut-

ing design intelligence for the extravagant use of energy and materials.

Computing power that fifty years ago would fill a house full of vacuum

tubes and wires can now be held in the palm of your hand. The old

steelmills whose blast furnaces, slag heaps, and towering smokestacks

dominated the industrial landscape have been replaced with efficient

scaled-down facilities and processes. Drafty, polluting fireplaces have

been replaced with compact, highly efficient ones that burn pelletized

wood wastes. Many products and processes have been miniaturized,

with the flow of energy and materials required to make and operate

them often dramatically reduced.

These examples show that when we think differently about design,

new solutions are often quick to emerge. By explicitly taking ecology as

the basis of design, we can vastly diminish the environmental impacts of

everything we make and build.1 While we’ve often done well in apply-

ing design intelligence to narrowly circumscribed problems, we now

need to integrate ecologically sound technologies, planning methods,

and policies across scales and professional boundaries.

The nutrients, energy, and information essential to life flow

smoothly across scales ranging from microorganisms to continents; in

contrast, design has become fragmented into dozens of separate techni-

cal disciplines, each with its own specialized language and tools. As the

inventor Buckminster Fuller once noted, “Nature did not call a depart-

ment heads’ meeting when I threw a green apple into the pond, with

the department heads having to make a decision about how to handle

this biological encounter with chemistry’s water and the unauthorized

use of the physics department’s waves.”2 No amount of regulation, in-

tervention, or standalone brilliance will bring us a healthier world until

we begin to deliberately join design decisions into coherent patterns

that are congruent with nature’s own.

In a sense, evolution is nature’s ongoing design process. The won-

derful thing about this process is that it is happening continuously

throughout the entire biosphere. A typical organism has undergone at

least a million years of intensive research and development, and none of

35An Introduction to Ecological Design

our own designs can match that standard. Evolution has endowed indi-

vidual organisms with a wide range of abilities, from harvesting sun-

shine to perceiving the world. Further, it has enabled communities of

organisms to collectively recycle nutrients, regulate water cycles, and

maintain both structure and diversity. Evolution has patiently worked

on the living world to create a nested series of coherent levels, from or-

ganism to planet, each manifesting its own design integrities.

A few years ago, two Norwegian researchers set out to determine the

bacterial diversity of a pinch of beech-forest soil and a pinch of shallow

coastal sediment. They found well over four thousand species in each

sample, which more than equaled the number listed in the standard cat-

alogue of bacterial diversity. Even more remarkably, the species present

in the two samples were almost completely distinct.3 This extraordinary

diversity pervades the Earth’s manifold habitats, from deep-sea volcanic

vents to mangrove swamps, from Arctic tundra to redwood forests. It is

a diversity predicated on precise adaptation to underlying conditions.

Within this diversity, within a hawk’s wings or a nitrogen-fixing bac-

terium’s enzymes, lies a rich kind of design competence. In nature,

there is a careful choreography of function and form bridging many

scales. It is this dance that provides the wider context for our own de-

signs. In the attempt to minimize environmental impacts, we are in-

evitably drawn to nature’s own design strategies.

These strategies form a rich resource for design guidance and inspi-

ration. Contemplating the patterns that sustain life, we are given crucial

design clues. We learn that spider plants are particularly good at remov-

ing pollutants from the air and might serve as an effective component

of a living system for purifying the confined air of office buildings. We

discover that wetlands can remove vast quantities of nutrients, detoxify

compounds, and neutralize pathogens, and therefore can play a role in

an ecological wastewater treatment system. The sum of these simple les-

sons from nature’s own exquisite design catalog is nothing less than a

blueprint for our own survival.


Suppose we represent our working “natural capital”—forests, lakes,

wetlands, salmon, and so on—with a stack of coins. This natural capital

provides renewable interest in the form of sustainable fish and timber

yields, crops, and clean air, water, and soil. At present, we are simply

spending this capital, drawing it down to dangerously low levels, de-

creasing the ability of remaining ecosystems to assimilate ever-increas-

ing quantities of waste. Such an approach cannot help but deplete natu-

ral capital.

Ecological design offers three critical strategies for addressing this

loss: conservation, regeneration, and stewardship. Conservation slows

the rate at which things are getting worse by allowing scarce resources

to be stretched further. Typical conservation measures include recycling

materials, building denser communities to preserve agricultural land,

adding insulation, and designing fuel-efficient cars. Unfortunately, con-

servation implicitly assumes that damage must be done and that the

only recourse is to somehow minimize this damage. Conservation alone

cannot lead to sustainability since it still implies an annual natural-

resource deficit.

In the years before his death, Robert Rodale, editor of Rodale Press,

was very concerned with what he termed regeneration. In a literal sense,

regeneration is the repair and renewal of living tissue. Ecological design

works to regenerate a world deeply wounded by environmentally in-

sensitive design. This may involve restoring an eroded stream to biolog-

ical productivity, re-creating habitat, or renewing soil. Regeneration is

an expansion of natural capital through the active restoration of de-

graded ecosystems and communities. It is a form of healing and renewal

that embodies the richest possibilities of culture to harmonize with na-

ture. Regeneration not only preserves and protects: It restores a lost

plenitude.

Stewardship is a particular quality of care in our relations with other

living creatures and with the landscape. It is a process of steady com-

mitment informed by constant feedback—for example, the gully is


eroding, or Joe’s doing poorly in math. It requires the careful mainte-

nance and continual reinvestment that a good gardener might practice

through weeding, watering, watching for pests, enriching the soil with

compost, or adding new varieties. Stewardship maintains natural capital

by spending frugally and investing wisely.

Ecological design embraces conservation, regeneration, and stew-

ardship alike. If conservation involves spending natural capital more

slowly, and regeneration is the expansion of natural capital, then stew-

ardship is the wisdom to live on renewable interest rather than eating

into natural capital. Conservation is already well established in the engi-

neering and resource-management professions, but regeneration is just

beginning to be explored by restoration ecologists, organic farmers,

and others. Stewardship is a quality that all of us already have to some

degree. Together, conservation, regeneration, and stewardship remind

us of both the technical and personal dimensions of sustainability. They

open up new kinds of creative endeavor even as they reaffirm the need

for limits.

Careful ecological design permits such a great reduction in energy

and material flows that human communities can once again be deeply

integrated into their surrounding ecological communities. By carefully

tailoring the scale and composition of wastes to the ability of ecosys-

tems to assimilate them, we may begin to re-create a symbiotic relation-

ship between nature and culture. By letting nature do the work, we al-

low ecosystems to flourish even as they purify and reclaim wastes,

ameliorate the climate, provide food, or control flooding. It is clear that

“the world is a vast repository of unknown biological strategies that

could have immense relevance should we develop a science of inte-

grating the stories embedded in nature into the systems we design to

sustain us.”4 Ecological design begins to integrate these biological

strategies by gently improvising upon life’s own chemical vocabulary,

geometry, flows, and patterns of community.

For example, if we wish to buttress a badly eroding hill, a conven-

tional design might call for a concrete retaining wall many inches thick


to hold the earth in place. Such a wall makes ostentatious use of matter

and energy and does little to heal the land. In looking for an ecological

design solution, we seek natural processes that perform this same work

of holding the earth in place. We are led to trees, and a useful solution

in practice has been to seed the hill with hundreds of willow branches.

Within months the branches sprout, providing effective soil stabiliza-

tion. The willow’s articulated roots are far more adapted to keeping the

soil in place than concrete, which bears only a superficial relationship to

the soil.5

Ecological design occurs in the context of specific places. It grows

out of place the way the oak grows from an acorn. It responds to the

particularities of place: the soils, vegetation, animals, climate, topogra-

phy, water flows, and people lending it coherence. It seeks locally

adapted solutions that can replace matter, energy, and waste with de-

sign intelligence. Such an approach matches biological diversity with

cultural diversity rather than compromising both the way conventional

solutions do.

To design with this kind of care, we need to rigorously assess a de-

sign’s set of environmental impacts. To take a simple example, consider

just a few of the impacts of a typical house. Carbon dioxide emissions

from the manufacture of the cement in its foundation contribute to

global warming. The production of the electricity used to heat the

house may contribute to acid rain in the region. Altered topography

and drainage on-site may cause erosion, impacting the immediate wa-

tershed. The house might displace existing wildlife habitat. Inside the

house, the health of the occupants may be compromised by emissions

from the various glues, resins, and finishes used during construction.

The lumber may have hastened the destruction of distant ancient

forests. We are left with a somewhat disheartening picture of the wider

ecological costs of a single building.

Ecological design converts these impacts from invisible side effects

into explicitly incorporated design constraints. If ordinary cement’s

contribution to global warming renders its large-scale use undesirable,


this imposes a critical design constraint. Perhaps the house can be sited

in a way that minimizes cement use, or alternative, less-destructive ce-

ments can be used. If heating the house requires excessive quantities of

electricity or natural gas, it may be possible to use passive solar heating

through careful orientation of the building and the proper choice of

building materials. In a similar way, each of the impacts can be turned

into a stimulus for ecological design innovation.

Ecological design brings natural flows to the foreground. It cele-

brates the flow of water on the landscape, the rushing wind, the fertility

of the earth, the plurality of species, and the rhythms of the sun, moon,

and tides. It renders the invisible visible, allowing us to speak of it and

carry it in our lives. It brings us back home. As the elements of our sur-

vival—the provenance of our food and energy, the veins of our water-

shed, the contours of our mountains—become vivid and present once

again, they ground us in our place. We are given news of our region and

the comings and goings of our fellow species. Ultimately, ecological de-

sign deepens our sense of place, our knowledge of both its true abun-

dance and its unsuspected fragility.

Ecological design is a way of integrating human purpose with na-

ture’s own flows, cycles, and patterns. It begins with the richest possible

understanding of the ecological context of a given design problem and

develops solutions that are consistent with the cultural context. Such

design cannot be the work of experts only. It is ultimately the work of a

sustainable culture, one skilled in reweaving the multiple layers of natu-

ral and human design. Ecological designers are facilitators and catalysts

in the cultural processes underlying sustainability.

We are beginning to get the pieces right, from highly efficient appli-

ances to organic farms. However, until the pieces constitute the texture

of everyday life, they will remain insufficient. This book is about the de-

sign wherewithal necessary to create a sustainable world. It provides a

new way of seeing and thinking about design. It suggests a new set of

questions and themes to order the design process. It proposes a form of


design that is able to translate the vision of sustainability into the every-

day objects, buildings, and landscapes around us. It embraces the best

of the new ecological technologies but also inquires into the cultural

foundations of sustainability. In short, it is an exploration of practical

harmonies between nature and culture.

Table 1 compares conventional and ecological design in relation to a

number of relevant issues.


TABLE 1. Characteristics of Conventional and Ecological Design

Issue Conventional Design Ecological Design

Energy source Usually nonrenewable and de- Whenever feasible, re-structive, relying on fossil newable: solar, wind, fuels or nuclear power; the small-scale hydro, or design consumes natural biomass; the design capital lives off solar income

Materials use High-quality materials are used Restorative materials clumsily, and resulting toxic cycles in which waste and low-quality materials are for one process be-discarded in soil, air, and comes food for the water next; designed-in

reuse, recycling, flexi-bility, ease of repair, and durability

Pollution Copious and endemic Minimized; scale and composition of wastes conform to the ability of ecosystems to absorb them

Toxic substances Common and destructive, rang- Used extremely sparingly ing from pesticides to paints in very special circum-

stancesEcological Limited to compliance with Sophisticated and built

accounting mandatory requirements like in; covers a wide range environmental-impact reports of ecological impacts

over the entire life-cycle of the project, from extraction of ma-terials to final recycling of components


Ecology and Perceived as in opposition; Perceived as compatible; economics short-run view long-run view

Design criteria Economics, custom, and con- Human and ecosystem venience health, ecological

economicsSensitivity to eco- Standard templates are repli- Responds to bioregion:

logical context cated all over the planet with the design is integrated little regard to culture or with local soils, vegeta-place; skyscrapers look the tion, materials, culture, same from New York to Cairo climate, topography;

the solutions grow from place

Sensitivity to cul- Tends to build a homogeneous Respects and nurtures tural context global culture; destroys local traditional knowledge

commons of place and local mate-rials and technologies; fosters commons

Biological, cul- Employs standardized designs Maintains biodiversity tural, and eco- with high energy and mate- and the locally adapted nomic diversity rials throughput, thereby cultures and econo-

eroding biological, cultural, mies that support itand economic diversity

Knowledge base Narrow disciplinary focus Integrates multiple de-sign disciplines and wide range of sciences; comprehensive

Spatial scales Tends to work at one scale at a Integrates design across time multiple scales, reflect-

ing the influence of larger scales on smaller scales and smaller on larger

Whole systems Divides systems along bound- Works with whole sys-aries that do not reflect the tems; produces designs underlying natural processes that provide the great-

est possible degree of internal integrity and coherence

TABLE 1. Continued



Role of nature Design must be imposed on Includes nature as a part-nature to provide control ner: whenever possible, and predictability and meet substitutes nature’s narrowly defined human own design intelli-needs gence for a heavy re-

liance on materials and energy

Underlying metaphors Machine, product, part Cell, organism, ecosystem

Level of Reliance on jargon and experts A commitment to clear participation who are unwilling to commu- discussion and debate;

nicate with public limits com- everyone is empowered munity involvement in criti- to join the design cal design decisions process

Types of learning Nature and technology are hid- Nature and technology den; the design does not are made visible; the teach us over time design draws us closer

to the systems that ulti-mately sustain us

Response to sus- Views culture and nature as Views culture and nature tainability inimical, tries to slow the rate as potentially sym-crisis at which things are getting biotic; moves beyond

worse by implementing mild triage to a search for conservation efforts without practices that actively questioning underlying regenerate human and assumptions ecosystem health

TABLE 1. Continued


History and Background

Ecological design is not a new idea. By necessity, it has been brought to

a high level of excellence by many different cultures faced with widely

varying conditions. The Yanomamö, living with a refined knowledge of

the Amazon rainforest, deliberately propagate hundreds of plant

species, thereby enhancing biological diversity. Balinese aquaculture

and rice terracing maintain soil fertility and pure water while feeding

large numbers of people. Australian aborigines use stories and rituals to

preserve an exquisitely detailed ecological map of their lands. The de-

sign rules embedded in each of these cultures have enabled them to per-

sist for millennia.

Even during the most uncritical growth eras of the industrialized na-

tions, there have been strong movements for ecologically sound town

planning, healthy building, organic agriculture, appropriate technol-

ogy, renewable energy, and interdisciplinary approaches to design.

William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, Rudolph Steiner’s biody-

namic agriculture, Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities, Patrick Geddes’s

and Lewis Mumford’s regional planning, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s

organic architecture—each celebrated design at a human scale firmly

situated in a wider ecological context. Buckminster Fuller, in an enor-

mously productive five decades of work, tested the limits of ephemeral-

ization—decreasing the use of materials and energy—while designing

Dymaxion houses that could process their own wastes and be recycled

at the end of their useful lives.

By the 1960s, various streams of stubborn ethical and aesthetic oppo-

sition to unfettered industrialization coalesced into the first modern

generation of ecological design. Designer Sean Wellesley-Miller and

physicist Day Chahroudi designed building “skins” based on biological

metaphors and principles but using newly available materials. John and

Nancy Todd and their associates at the New Alchemy Institute de-

signed solar Arks that grew their own food, provided their own energy,

and recycled their own wastes.6 Other experimental houses and habitats

were built all over the world, including the Ouroboros House in Min-

neapolis, the Autonomous House at Cambridge University, and the

Farallones Institute’s Integral Urban House in Berkeley, California.

While different in form and purpose, all of these projects shared a simi-

lar vision: Biology and ecology are the key sciences in rethinking the de-

sign of habitat. Within these projects, the metaphor of a living organism


or ecosystem replaced Le Corbusier’s old image of a dwelling as a “ma-

chine for living.”

The house, the habitat we are most familiar with, seemed to be a

good place to start this first generation of ecological design. The rural

or village homestead was once the center of a largely self-sufficient sys-

tem that produced a family’s livelihood, its food and fiber, and its tools

and toys. Over a period of several hundred years, this homestead has

become an anonymous mass-produced dwelling unit, its inhabitants

members of a faceless consumershed, the house itself totally dependent

on outside resources to sustain its inhabitants. Rethinking home metab-

olism became the mission of the first generation of ecological design.

The Integral Urban House, conceived by biologists Bill and Helga

Olkowski and sponsored by the Farallones Institute, started in 1973 in a

ramshackle Victorian house in Berkeley, California.7 The oil embargo

had made many people aware for the first time of their almost total

dependence on an oil economy. Designers were challenged to work

with the sun, turning this house from a consumer of oil for heating,

cooling, electricity, and food into a producer of thermal energy, food,

and electricity.

The Integral Urban House was intended to restore its inhabitants to

a measure of control over the basics of their life support, reduce the

outflow of money to pay for resources and services that the home and

local environment could provide, and encourage interaction with local

ecosystems. The idea was to integrate energy and food production and

waste and water recycling directly into the home design. The Integral

Urban House featured composting toilets, an aquaculture pond, or-

ganic gardens, and advanced recycling. The guiding vision was a new

synthesis of architecture and biology.

During these years of creative ferment, important theoretical ad-

vances were also made. In Design with Nature, Ian McHarg looked at

the natural functioning of landscapes and proposed that intelligent


land-use planning be based on “what a landscape wants to be.” In

Small Is Beautiful, Fritz Schumacher, drawing heavily on the ideas of

Gandhi, persuasively argued that small-scale systems made economic

sense, thus launching the appropriate-technology movement. Amory

Lovins provided a coherent solar alternative to nuclear energy in Soft

Energy Paths. John and Nancy Todd provided nine key precepts for “bi-

ological design” in Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology as the

Basis of Design, recently republished as From Eco-Cities to Living Ma-

chines: Principles of Ecological Design. Christopher Alexander and col-

leagues presented a powerful new theory of design with important eco-

logical ramifications in A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of

Building.

In the 1980s, the environmental movement grew into a broad-based

sustainability movement. Great technical advances were made in solar

and wind energy. Lovins’s Rocky Mountain Institute helped transform

energy policy in many nations. Bill Mollison’s “permaculture” ap-

proach to organic agriculture and healthy building gained a worldwide

following from its modest start in Tasmania. Fundamental research on

sustainable agriculture was performed at the University of California,

Santa Cruz, and the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Work in landscape

ecology and conservation biology provided a new set of tools for pre-

serving biodiversity that have been effectively used by Project Wild. Pe-

ter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk created re-

newed interest in pedestrian-oriented town planning.

The 1990s have seen the emergence of the international ecocities

movement, which is working to create healthier, more resource-

efficient cities. Constructed ecosystems—wetlands and contained mi-

crocosms—are rapidly becoming an important alternative to conven-

tional wastewater treatment systems. Industrial ecology and life-cycle

analysis are already key tools for minimizing pollution. New approaches

to ecological restoration and toxic decontamination show great prom-


ise. Recent attempts to integrate ecology and economics are also begin-

ning to bear fruit, including Pliny Fisk’s approach to bioregional design

at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Austin,

Texas. Artists like Andy Goldsworthy and Mierle Ukeles are creating

works that demonstrate a deep commitment to ecological ideas.

The 1980s and 1990s also saw the publication of a handful of impor-

tant theoretical works related to ecological design. John Tillman Lyle’s

Design for Human Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use, and Natural Re-

sources and more recent Regenerative Design for Sustainable Develop-

ment provide careful and comprehensive treatments of ecological design

strategies. Robert L. Thayer, Jr.’s, Gray World, Green Heart: Technology,

Nature, and the Sustainable Landscape is a more philosophical work that

raises important issues. Sim Van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe’s Sustain-

able Communities: A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs, and Towns

treats ecological design at the town scale. Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of

Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability makes important connec-

tions between ecological design and business.

The first generation of ecological design was based on small-scale ex-

periments with living lightly in place. Many of the technologies and

ideas of this generation, such as alternative building materials, renew-

able energy, organic foods, conservation, and recycling have been

widely adopted in piecemeal fashion. We now stand at the threshold of

a second generation of ecological design. This second generation is not

an alternative to dominant technology and design; it is the best path for

their necessary evolution.

The second generation of ecological design must effectively weave

the insights of literally dozens of disciplines. It must create a viable eco-

logical design craft within a genuine culture of sustainability rather than

getting entangled in interdisciplinary disputes and turf wars. It is time

to bring forth new ecologies of design that are rich with cultural and

epistemological diversity.


Notes

1. “Ecology as the basis of design” is a wonderful phrase that was used in thesubtitle of the pioneering book Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology asthe Basis of Design by Nancy Jack Todd and John Todd (San Francisco: SierraClub Books, 1984). The book is now available in an updated edition called FromEco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design (Berkeley: NorthAtlantic Books, 1994).

2. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking(New York: Macmillan, 1975), 108.

3. Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Harvard Univ.Press, 1992), 144.

4. Nancy Jack Todd and John Todd, From Eco-Cities, 175.5. More details of such an approach are provided by Hugo Schiechtl in Bio-

engineering for Land Reclamation and Conservation (Edmonton: Univ. of Al-berta Press, 1980).

6. The Ark is fully documented by Nancy Jack Todd and John Todd in To-morrow Is Our Permanent Address: The Search for an Ecological Science of Designas Embodied in the Bioshelter (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).

7. The Integral Urban House is exhaustively described by Helgo Olkowskiet al. in The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City (San Fran-cisco: Sierra Club Books, 1979).


Nature’s Geometry

51

Scale Linking

Consider a drop of rain. Hidden within it is an implicit history of places:

water gathered from ancient fjords, alpine lakes, urban reservoirs,

Antarctic ice, all running together in a single cycle, ever changing yet

unitary. The flow of water in the biosphere links Australia to Greenland

and Rocky Mountain springs to the Ganges. Other natural cycles bind

us to the living world as they carry nutrients and trace minerals between

earth, air, and water.

These cycles connect together phenomena at very different spatial

scales (characteristic lengths). Jumping in scale a thousandfold at each

step, we encounter a drop of water at a scale of one millimeter, a puddle

at one meter, a lake at one kilometer, and the Antarctic ice at one thou-

sand kilometers.

Nature’s processes are inherently scale linking, for they intimately

depend on the flow of energy and materials across scales. The waste

oxygen from blue-green algae is absorbed by a blue whale, whose own

waste carbon dioxide feeds an oak tree. Global cycles link organisms to-

gether in a highly effective recycling system crossing about seventeen

tenfold jumps in scale, from a ten-billionth of a meter (the scale of pho-

tosynthesis) to ten thousand kilometers (the scale of the Earth itself).

In a turbulent brook, eddies and whorls of all sizes grow and recede,

send out tendrils, absorb their neighbors, and are in turn absorbed. Wa-

ter is caught up in microscopic whirlpools and escapes to a larger scale,

only to recede again to the microscopic. Scale-linking systems “imply a

holism in which everything influences, or potentially influences, every-

thing else—because everything is in some sense constantly interacting

with everything else.”1 Nature is infused with the dynamical interpene-

tration of the vast and minute, an endless dervish mixing. Matter and


energy continually flow across scales, the small informing the large and

the large informing the small.

We are predisposed to seeing processes at a single scale, refracted

through a single discipline’s language, metaphors, and tools. In prac-

tice, this kind of perception is insufficient to capture the underlying

phenomena. Suppose we were to determine the characteristic scale of

acid rain. Is it the scale of a coal-fired power plant, spewing forth nitro-

gen and sulfur oxides? Or is it the scale of an individual house, feeding

from that power plant? Is it the scale of an unhealthy lake, whose fish

are dying as the water grows increasingly acidic? One might argue that

the scale is regional, embracing an entire network of power plants.

Canadians, angered by the disastrous impacts of American coal plants

on their own lakes and forests, believe the scale of acid rain is interna-

tional. Then again, perhaps we have missed the point: Isn’t the true

scale of acid rain molecular, embedded in the intricate process chem-

istry of coal combustion?

It is clear that each of these possible scales of analysis has both some

validity and some institutional support. Legions of experts study, re-

spectively, pollution-control measures for power plants, energy-efficient

homes, the ecology of lakes undergoing acidification, the atmospheric

dynamics of pollution, the international legal implications of acid rain,

and the chemistry of coal combustion. Acid rain involves the flow of

various contaminants across many levels of scale. If we focus on a single

scale, we miss the other scales, and hence miss opportunities to work

across them in a unified way to address the problem.

The acid-rain example demonstrates that the ecological impacts of

design activities cross scales and political jurisdictions. A house, a hy-

droelectric dam, and a wastewater system have impacts that are not

neatly confined to a single scale. What we do at one scale has subtle im-

pacts, both negative and positive, at many other scales. Scale linking re-

minds us of the wider environmental consequences of our designs.

Unless we work with nature’s own finely tuned scale-linking systems,

we endanger the stability of life on this planet. We have already in-

creased atmospheric carbon dioxide by one-fourth since preindustrial

times, with important implications for the global climate. Even in re-

mote regions, background levels of lead have increased by up to one

thousand times.2 Our industry and agriculture already generate annual

flows of heavy metals, sulfur, and other elements that are greater than

their natural counterparts.

If we are to properly include ecological concerns within design, we

must take seriously the challenge offered by scale linking. We need to

discover ways to integrate our design processes across multiple levels of

scale and make these processes compatible with natural cycles of water,

energy, and materials.

In the 1920s, an eccentric Englishman named Lewis Richardson

asked a deceptively simple question: What is the length of Britain’s

coastline? As he looked at more and more detailed maps, he noticed

new features. An apparently straight stretch of coastline on a coarse map

would resolve itself into a series of coves, bays, headlands, and peninsu-

las on a finer map. Over many levels of map scales, the rugged coastline

looked qualitatively similar.

While a square has no hidden detail at a finer scale, the British coast-

line constantly reveals new features as it is magnified (figure 4). Remark-

ably, it is made of fragments that resemble the whole. It is woven from a

new kind of geometry that connects scales. In this geometry, forms at

one scale resemble forms at another scale because the processes shaping

form are essentially identical across many scales. This geometry pro-

vides a useful metaphor for our own attempts to bridge design disci-

plines that span very different scales.

In recent years, mathematicians have begun studying geometrical

forms sharing many properties of the British coastline. While these ide-

alized forms are immune to the subtle chance factors that give a natural

53Nature’s Geometry


FIGURE 4. The coastline of Britain at successive scales of magnification

object its texture and irregularity, they provide simple and explicit mod-

els of geometries that link together multiple scales. Consider the con-

struction of the Koch curve.

We start with a line segment.


Now we divide the segment into three parts.

Next, we build an equilateral triangle from the middle segment, eras-

ing the base. We now have four segments, each with a length one-third

of the original segment.

Now we apply the same process to each of the four new segments,

adding a finer level of detail.

Applying the same process infinitely often, we obtain the Koch

curve.

Each stage in the construction of the Koch curve adds subtler de-

tail. The smallest existing level of scale forms a kind of skeleton for the

articulation of form at the next, even smaller, level of scale. At each

stage, the structure is organized by pushing the middle third of each

segment out into a triangle. Since each fragment of the Koch curve is

organized by the same processes that shape the whole curve, each frag-

ment resembles the whole curve. In fact, it is easy to see that the Koch

curve is made up of four exact 3:1 copies of itself.

Both the coastline of Britain and the Koch curve manifest a remark-

able kind of symmetry that explicitly links multiple scales. The sym-

metry is a simple one: The whole form is built up from subforms that

echo the whole. This symmetry has appropriately been dubbed self-

similarity, and forms possessing it are termed fractals. Self-similarity is a

direct consequence of identical processes shaping form across many

scales.

Fractal geometry is the geometry of scale linking. It connects a re-

markable range of scales, from twig to tree, from rivulet to watershed.

Even our own bodies are infused with fractal forms: “The lymph sys-

tem, the small intestine, the lungs, muscle tissue, connective tissue, the

folding patterns on the surface of the brain, the calyx filters in the kid-

ney, and the design of the bile ducts—all show [fractal] scaling. This

fractal design vastly increases the surface area available for the distribu-

tion, collection, absorption, and excretion of a host of vital fluids and

dangerous toxins that regularly course through the body.”3 The avail-

able surface area of the lungs or brain increases when viewed at finer

and finer scales, just as the length of the British coastline does. Since the

chemical interactions critical for healthy biological functioning proceed

more efficiently when a greater surface area is available, this evolved

geometry is appropriate for its task. Convoluted fractal forms are val-

uable precisely because—unlike spheres—they have extremely high

surface-to-volume ratios. In contrast with the standard forms of Euclid-

ean geometry, fractal forms facilitate the flow of energy and materials

across multiple scales.

In nature, geometries reflect and enhance underlying processes. In a


paper on the role of biological surfaces, the visionary biologist Paul

Mankiewicz discusses the ability of the fractal root systems of plants to

purify water.4 In conventional wastewater treatment systems, bacteria

flow along with the water to be treated. They absorb substances in their

immediate vicinity through relatively inefficient diffusion processes. In

contrast, ecological wastewater treatment systems facilitate rich chemi-

cal exchanges on the surfaces of the roots (figure 5). The roots actively


FIGURE 5. Fractal roots and wastewater treatment

The fractal roots grow into the flow, creating a vast surface area for biological interactions and maximizing chemical gradients

A floating mat of water hyacinths showing the fractal structure of the root system

Bacteria flow with the water and absorb nutrients through inefficient diffusion processes

order the flow of chemical energy, facilitating the work of the microor-

ganisms that inhabit them. Preliminary research indicates that the vast

surface area provided by the root systems permits nutrient filtering to

be performed extremely efficiently.

Nature’s geometry is an important organizing principle for ecologi-

cal design. It determines the context for design, whether at the scale of

a root system or an entire watershed. Over a century ago, Major John

Wesley Powell, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, explicitly recog-

nized this organizing principle in his suggestion to settle the arid West

in a way that matched land allocations to the availability of water.

Speaking to the Montana Statehood Convention in Helena on August

9, 1889, “he proposed to organize the new state of Montana into coun-

ties whose boundaries would be established by the divisions between

hydrographic basins rather than by arbitrary political lines drawn on the

map. Such basins, already being plotted out in Montana as in other

parts of the west by his survey crews, were natural geographical and

topographical unities; they might be given political and economic unity

as well.”5 Powell foresaw the need to make water and homesteading

laws reflect the fragile ecology of the West.

A project conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area provides a con-

temporary application of this principle. Geographer Josh Collins has

been working with a mosquito abatement district to try to approximate

the original fractal drainage fingers on a seventy-acre marsh on U.S.

Navy land. After the marsh was disturbed by a road, it began to harbor

some stagnant water, which served as a breeding ground for mosqui-

toes. In an attempt to eliminate this standing water, early mosquito

abatement efforts focused on digging additional drainage ditches.

These ditches—unaccompanied by an increase in tidal flux—were so ef-

fective that water no longer entered the upper reaches of natural chan-

nels. Portions of the upper channels filled in, creating the very potholes

the mosquito abatement efforts were trying to avoid. As Collins notes,

“The ditches previously created for mosquito reduction are not alleviat-


ing the problem. In fact, the marshes with the most extensive ditch net-

works often generate the most mosquitoes. This is because the number,

size, and arrangement of these ditches were not determined in relation

to marsh geomorphology and tidal hydrology.”6 By augmenting total

tidal flow, severing drainage ditches connecting distinct drainage basins,

and adding new ditches, Collins and colleagues have been able to par-

tially restore the original fit between the geometry of the marsh’s

drainage fingers and the character of the tidal flux. The new system is

working well, and the marsh not only is mosquito-free but also is at-

tracting shorebirds previously unknown at the site.

Geological processes operate in a self-similar way over a vast range of

scales, producing a variety of fractal systems: coastlines, archipelagos,

mountains, watershed drainages, fault lines, mineral deposits, and so

on. Vegetation responds to these fractal landscape features, with each

plant favoring a particular microclimate and set of soil conditions. Veg-

etation, in turn, is a major determinant of ecosystem structure and ani-

mal habitat. Fractal geological forms are ultimately reflected in fractal

habitats.

Just as the earlier mosquito abatement efforts failed because they ig-

nored the geometry of the marsh’s drainage fingers, current political

and planning boundaries do not reflect the underlying structures and

flows of landscapes. It is as if blood cells moving from one part of the

body to another had to obtain travel visas. Our watersheds are divided

up among towns, counties, states, and countries. The strip of cleared

vegetation marking the Canada–U.S. border is visible in satellite pho-

tos, an ecologically meaningless line on a landscape otherwise filled

with subtle harmonies.

Twenty-five years ago, landscape architect and planner Ian McHarg

proposed a system of constraint maps that were intended to help plan-

ners identify ecologically sensitive areas. His plea for a more respon-

sive method of environmental planning remains just as valid today:

“Where planning does occur, its single instrument is zoning and by


this device political subdivisions are allocated densities irrespective of

geology, physiography, hydrology, soils, vegetation, scenery, or historic

beauty. The adoption of the ecological method would at least pro-

duce . . . a structure of open space wherein nature performed work for

man, or wherein development was dangerous.”7 Over time, perhaps we

will learn to discern the integrities and continuities, the match of ge-

ometry and flow, inherent in a region’s geology, hydrology, soils, and

vegetation.

Our ecological crises have resulted, in part, from a failure to match

human flows of energy and materials to the limits of the landscape. The

geometry of the landscape is manifested in the distribution of agricul-

tural lands, minerals, wetlands, forests, and other primary resources. We

have not followed this geometry. We have overstepped local limits and

relied on far-flung ecological subsidies. A good example is provided by

the vast water diversion projects that maintain life in desert towns like

Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. While this refusal to acknowledge

the limitations of place has many aspects, it is also a design issue. If we

impose a Cartesian grid on a fractal landscape, settlements will be too

large or small, flows will not be of a sensible scale, and we will compro-

mise the ecological resources we depend on.

In contrast, by matching the flows on a landscape to its inherent

geometry, we allow ecological patterns to work for us. We can use natu-

ral drainage instead of storm drains, wetlands instead of sewage treat-

ment plants, and indigenous materials rather than imported ones. We

can work toward a steady convergence of dwelling, design, and the

geometry of place.

We are surrounded by a fractal landscape—clouds, mountains, river

networks—and surely this has left us a fondness for the reconciliation

and interweaving of multiple scales so characteristic of fractal geometry.

This geometry teaches us a new kind of attentiveness, one that recog-

nizes that “the landscape is the crucible in which living forms have

evolved, and since the landscape crackles with fractals, the forms bred


there are fractal as well.”8 This geometry reminds us that nature is con-

stantly linking scales, bringing together the respiration of the blue

whale and the photosynthesis of the oak in a single dance.

Creating a Design Dialogue Across Scales

Our present level of design integration across scales resembles the pro-

fusion of U.S. railroads in the mid-nineteenth century, each with its

own gauge of tracks. The courageous cross-continental traveler would

frequently transfer from one train to another since the gauges were in-

compatible. Architects, urban planners, industrial designers—design

professionals of all stripes—are clinging to their own gauges, their own


FIGURE 6. Hokusai’s Great Wave, illustrating self-similar waves at many levelsof scale

scales of interest and expertise. Of course, each field does work at a

different scale, and does incorporate certain specialized knowledge, but

each must work within a common background of scale-linking proc -

esses that cross disciplinary boundaries. The challenge is to create a dia-

logue that links the insights of designers working at different levels of

scale. Without a common gauge, a shared dialogue, we will continue to

face the costs associated with rigidly segregated disciplines: mutual in-

comprehension and designs that work at cross-purposes.

In contrast, ecological design is not bound to a particular scale. It

provides a way of uniting diverse design perspectives—and the different

scales they represent—by testing them against strong ecological con-

straints. As we connect design across multiple scales, opportunities ap-

pear. For instance, we find that environmental planners can work not

just for open space, but for critical wildlife corridors spanning biological

reserves hundreds of kilometers apart. It is possible to design soaps that

not only clean well but are biologically compatible with soils and

streams. New glazing technologies, appropriate choices of building ma-

terials, and sensible solar siting can together eliminate the need for a

conventional heating system. In each case, a wider design dialogue al-

lows a deeper integration of design with nature.

The work of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto

Waterfront offers an excellent model for design across typically antago-

nistic professions and political jurisdictions. Since 1988, the commission

has brought together diverse government agencies and citizens groups

in an “ecosystem approach” to planning. According to the commis-

sion’s final report, Regeneration: Toronto’s Waterfront and the Sustain-

able City, this approach

• includes the whole system, not just parts of it

• recognizes the ecosystem’s dynamic nature, presenting a moving

picture rather than a still photograph of it


• uses a broad definition of environments—natural, physical, eco-

nomic, social, and cultural

• encompasses both urban and rural activities

• is based on natural geographic units such as watersheds, rather

than on political boundaries

• embraces all levels of activity—local, regional, national, and inter-

national9

The Toronto watershed is afflicted with many different stresses. A

very incomplete list would include emissions from factories and sewage

treatment plants, agricultural runoff, household dumping of toxins in

storm drains, acid rain and smog from the highly urbanized region,

channelized creeks, habitat fragmentation from development, and de-

forestation. The commission has responded by recognizing a kind of

“green infrastructure”:

What if we were to start with the demand for natural systems? How much

land should be allocated to nature? How much to other kinds of open

spaces? What ecological, aesthetic, urban design, and recreational func-

tions can they fulfill?

This would lead to a different way of structuring urban form, using a

fully linked, continuous “green infrastructure,” based on natural systems,

and recognizing open space—not as an absence of buildings but as a land

use in its own right. . . . A green infrastructure may include natural habi-

tat areas; land-forms such as bluffs, valleys, tablelands, beaches, and cliffs;

aquifers and recharge areas; rural lands; heritage landscapes; parks, trails,

and other open spaces; and archaeological sites.10

The notion of green infrastructure hints at a holistic approach to pol-

lution, biodiversity, and watershed health, acknowledging that a water-

shed requires coordinated governance and interdisciplinary approaches.

Moreover, the Regeneration report is surprisingly frank about the


inadequacies of existing political and planning jurisdictions in alleviat-

ing environmental problems that routinely transcend their boundaries.

It states that “in the past, the parochial pressures of bureaucracies and

representative governments have almost compelled them to be unre-

sponsive to cross-jurisdictional issues. When everyone is in charge, no

one is in charge.”11 The commission’s work is a promising attempt to

create a meaningful dialogue among design disciplines.

The Natural Step Foundation in Sweden has taken on an even more

ambitious project: creating a strong interdisciplinary scientific consen-

sus on the root causes of the environmental crisis. The Natural Step has

brought together scientists and professionals from dozens of fields in a

search for shared understanding and vision. The results have been sum-

marized in a beautiful, simply written booklet distributed to every

household in Sweden. The Natural Step has deeply influenced policy-

makers, businesspeople, and ordinary citizens. Founder Dr. K.-H.

Robèrt states the motivation for such a project:

Up to now, much of the debate over the environment has had the charac-

ter of monkey chatter amongst the withering leaves of a dying tree—the

leaves representing specific, isolated problems. We are confronted with a

mass of seemingly insoluble questions. In the very midst of all this chatter

about leaves, very few of us have been paying attention to the environ-

ment’s trunk and branches. They are deteriorating as a result of processes

about which there is little or no controversy; and the thousands of indi-

vidual problems that are the subject of so much debate are, in fact, mani-

festations of systemic errors that are undermining the foundations of

society.12

Both the Toronto waterfront and Natural Step projects are dialogues

that reflect the inherent scale linking of natural processes. They bridge

the language, the attitudes, and the fears that have kept the various sci-

entific and design disciplines apart. Ecological design is an invitation to

a similar dialogue, for without it, we will continue to find only frag-


mented solutions that are just precursors to further problems. We will

continue to destroy that which is whole. On the other hand, if we begin

such a dialogue in good faith, we may begin to find designs nuanced

enough to honor the diversity and complexity of life itself.

Notes

1. John Briggs, Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos: Discovering a New Aestheticof Art, Science, and Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 21.

2. John Harte et al., Toxics A to Z: A Guide to Everyday Pollution Hazards(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1991), 333.

3. Briggs, Fractals, 124.4. These comments rely on a manuscript version of Paul Mankiewicz’s pa-

per “Biological Surfaces, Metabolic Capacitance, Growth, and Differentiation:A Theoretical Exploration of Thermodynamic, Economic, and Material Effi-ciencies in Fluid Purification Systems,” a 1993 report from the Center forRestoration of Waters, Falmouth, Mass.

5. Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell andthe Second Opening of the West (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 315.

6. Vicki L. Kramer, Joshua N. Collins, and Charles Beesley, “Reduction ofSalt Marsh Mosquitoes by Enhancing Tidal Action,” Proceedings of CaliforniaMosquito Vector Control Association (1992): 21.

7. Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural HistoryPress, 1969), 161.

8. Briggs, Fractals, 36.9. Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, Regenera-

tion: Toronto’s Waterfront and the Sustainable City: Final Report (Toronto:Queen’s Printer of Ontario, 1992), xxii.

10. Ibid., 78.11. Ibid., xxii.12. K.-H. Robèrt, “Non-Negotiable Facts as a Basis for Decision-Making,”

a working paper for the Natural Step Foundation, Amiralitetshuset, Sweden, 1-2.


PART TWO

THE ECOLOGICALDESIGN PROCESS

INTRODUCTION

The Compost Privy Story

The chapters in Part Two introduce five broad principles of ecological

design. The first principle grounds the design in the details of place. In

the words of Wendell Berry, we need to ask, “What is here? What will

nature permit us to do here? What will nature help us to do here?”1 The

second principle provides criteria for evaluating the ecological impacts

of a given design. The third principle suggests that these impacts can be

minimized by working in partnership with nature. The fourth principle

implies that ecological design is the work not just of experts, but of en-

tire communities. The fifth principle tells us that effective design trans-

forms awareness by providing ongoing possibilities for learning and

participation.

Taken together, these five principles help us to think about the inte-

gration of ecology and design. They can be readily illustrated by a seem-

ingly humble example: the compost privy.2

In the late sixties and early seventies, many young people moved out

of the cities into the rural backcountry to pursue their dream of living a

more self-sufficient life closer to nature. Sim and his family were among

those back-to-the-landers. As both a homesteader and an architect, he

was often called upon to help these new rural dwellers attempting to

build their own houses and to deal with wells, septic tanks, building

codes, and local officialdom. Common problems—aside from lack of

money—were water supply and the unavailability of suitable soils and

slope to accommodate a leaching field to percolate wastewater. Many

homesteaders worked hard to squeeze a meager amount of water out of

seasonal springs, and they were not about to flush most of it down the

toilet.

Sim’s conversion to ecological awareness had occurred some years

earlier, on an occasion when Walter, the graduate student who rented

his downstairs apartment, came by for a cup of coffee. Sim threw the

69

70 The Ecological Design Process

coffee grounds into the trashcan filled with food wrappers, cans, bot-

tles, banana peels, steak bones, and leftover oatmeal. Walter wrinkled

his nose, looked at Sim with benign disgust, and asked, “Don’t you

know how to compost?” They sorted through the trash, retrieved the

organic wastes, and took them out to the yard, where they layered dead

leaves, lawn clippings, and loose soil over them. Every few days Sim

added more organic wastes, soil, and garden debris until the pile was

about three feet high. Walter assisted and coached Sim those first

months until graduation day, when they turned the pile. The bottom

was now rich, crumbly, earthy-smelling compost.

Sim later helped redesign and rebuild an old house in Berkeley into a

model urban ecological environment known as the Integral Urban

House. The house had two composting bins, each about three feet by

three feet. Properly managed, they worked like dynamite. The house

also had a prototype “composting toilet”—the Clivus Multrum in-

vented by an engineer for use in summer cabins built around glacial

lakes in Sweden. The thin soil mantle and the cabins’ close proximity to

the lakes made it impossible to install standard septic tanks and leaching

fields, which disperse wastewater into the soil through pipes perforated

with drainage holes. The Clivus Multrum at the Integral Urban House

was an ungainly contraption built of fiberglass, a tank about ten feet

long by four feet wide installed in the basement. A large tube extended

up from the basement to the underside of the toilet seat upstairs, and a

smaller tube ran up to the kitchen to receive organic wastes. The tank’s

bottom was lined with peat moss. Waste materials fell in through the

tubes at the top and, like a glacier, slowly decomposed their way toward

an access panel at the front, where the finished compost could be

removed.

The size and expense of the Clivus Multrum made it unsuitable for

use by homesteaders. Compost bins provided a more useful model. The

idea was that if household wastes could be successfully composted in

bins, human wastes could be, too. So Sim designed a household com-

posting privy based on the compost-bin design, using concrete-block

walls and a slab instead of the wood frame and removeable slats of the

compost bin. The first composter was built in a house at Green Gulch

Farm, a Buddhist retreat in nearby Marin County. Soon Sim’s neighbor

built one, and people started calling for plans. The virtues of the system

were that it saved ten to fifteen thousand gallons of water that other-

wise would disappear down each toilet every year; it reduced the need

for large leach fields, and it literally made people responsible for their

own shit, an idea that was attractive to libertarians, organic purists, out-

law builders, and people engaged in reexamining and redesigning all

the aspects of their daily lives.

In many rural counties, the compost privy caught on like wildfire,

and local health departments winced. For years, the official measure of

material progress in the United States had been the number of flush toi-

lets as counted by the Census. Now the steady, certain move forward

was being threatened by an organic indoor outhouse! Moreover, the

new design threatened established rules and regulations. Some environ-

mentalists counted on conventional standards for septic tank/leaching-

field systems based on water use to restrict new development. The

building code defined habitable dwellings as having flush toilets and

having electrical outlets every twelve feet. The regulations governing

waste disposal allowed for alternatives, but no one ever asked about

them.

Some time afterward, Sim’s position as California State Architect

and director of the state Office of Appropriate Technology allowed him

to examine outmoded and inappropriate regulations. A major study of

the health risks associated with compost privies was launched. The

study found that they posed no health risks and also reported that the

privies were safely collecting and storing waste materials even though

the conditions required for optimal composting were not present in

many of the units studied. Over the years, compost privies have come to

be used around the world. People have modified the design for use in

71The Compost Privy Story

cold climates and other special conditions, developed new ways to con-

trol moisture, and made various other design improvements.

First Principle: Solutions Grow from Place

The compost privy design in both the United States and Europe grew

out of specific site conditions and limitations as well as the values of

users. Today, many design opportunities and possibilities are sacrificed

to the gods of centralization and standardization, the supposed

economies of scale, and a simple ignorance of how one learns from a

place. In many ways, conventional wisdom works against learning from

place. For example, many localities forbid a person, even if he or she

owns the land, from camping on it before building a permanent struc-

ture. Some of the most beautiful, appropriate, and frugal homes have

been built by nonarchitects and noncraftspeople who grew their houses

over time as they learned about the peculiarities of their site, developing

precise knowledge of place and making original and unique design

responses.

Second Principle: Ecological Accounting Informs Design

The impetus to develop a way to recycle human wastes that does not re-

quire their dilution and transport by water came from an understanding

of the incredible extravagance of conventional wastewater systems.

These systems waste vast quantities of water, nutrients, and energy; are

extremely expensive; and cause damage to freshwater and ocean habi-

tats. No conventional design is executed without a careful accounting

of all economic costs. Likewise, no ecological design is executed with-

out a careful accounting of all ecological costs, from resource depletion

to pollution and habitat destruction. Tracing the full set of ecological


impacts of a design is obviously a prerequisite for ameliorating those

impacts.

Third Principle: Design with Nature

When garbage becomes compost, an essential structure within nature is

revealed. In nature, materials are continuously broken into their basic

components and rebuilt into new living forms. In the compost privy ex-

ample, applying the example of decomposition in nature provided a de-

sign solution that was radically different from the conventional method.

By working with the patterns and processes favored by the living world,

we can dramatically reduce the ecological impacts of our designs. The

main thing we have learned in our attempts to incorporate natural

processes in design is that all participants—designers, builders, clients,

and users—seem enriched and enlivened by the experience.

Fourth Principle: Everyone is a Designer

The compost privy design evolved from listening to people with a prob-

lem. There was no “client,” and there was no “job.” A design evolved

and was adopted because it fit the needs of a particular community of

people with shared values and circumstances. Often in such instances

the distinctions between designer, participant, and user vanish. The

best design experiences occur when no one can claim credit for the so-

lution—when the solution grows and evolves organically out of a par-

ticular situation, process, and pattern of communication.

Fifth Principle: Make Nature Visible

While the compost privy was designed to conserve water, recycle nutri-

ents, protect fragile sites, and save money, its most lasting effect lies

73The Compost Privy Story

elsewhere. Almost every user we have encountered talks about the

learning that took place as a result of building and using this technol-

ogy. The experience was not always pleasant: there were sometimes

strong smells and too much liquid, and the user had to make an effort

to manage and turn the pile. “Flush and forget” technology does not

encourage mindfulness or a sense of responsibility. Yet the response was

overwhelmingly positive: Sim received more thoughtful letters and sug-

gestions regarding the privy design than for any other project. The de-

sign required people’s involvement, and that involvement necessarily

connected them with their own biological processes.

Notes

1. Wendell Berry, Home Economics (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987),146.

2. For more information on the compost privy, see The Toilet Papers by SimVan der Ryn (Ecological Design Press, 1995: Suite 185, Ten Libertyship Way,Sausalito, CA 94965).


FIRST PRINCIPLE

Solutions Growfrom Place

77

Ecological design begins with the intimate knowledge of a particular

place. Therefore, it is small-scale and direct, responsive to both local

conditions and local people. If we are sensitive to the nuances of place,

we can inhabit without destroying.

Sustainability in Traditional Cultures

In the year 563, Saint Columba left Ireland in a tiny rowboat, carrying

with him the kernel of Celtic Christianity. He eventually landed on

Iona, a tiny island in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.

Hiking Iona, one is struck by the intimacy bestowed upon the land-

scape. Every hill, pond, beach, cove, bay, offshore rock, and cottage

carries its history in its name. There is Dun’i, “Hill-Fort of Iona,” with

its little pond, Tobar na h’Atose, “the Well of Eternal Youth.” Ancient

marble and serpentine rocks can be found at Port Carnan a’Ghille, “the

Port of the Young Lad’s Rock.” Garadh Dubh Staonaig, “the Black

Dyke of Staonaig,” is a stone-and-earth running wall that glides over the

contours of the land. Over the generations, cormorants have migrated

across the sea to nest at Uahm nan Sgarhe, “the Cormorant’s Cave.”

The landscape of Iona is continually sung in the naming of its fea-

tures. This intimate knowledge of place—of sacred springs, nesting cor-

morants, and ancient rocks—is the starting point for ecological design.

It is local knowledge, attuned to the particulars of place.

Traditional place-centered cultures depended on their immediate

surroundings for almost everything: water, food, shelter, materials, fuel,

medicines, and spiritual sustenance. Instead of denying this inter-

dependence with the living world, they celebrated it. Sustainability, built

on patterns of long-term survival, was woven into the texture of every-

day life. In the words of the Tewa Pueblo educator Gregory Cajete,

“In each place, Native Americans actively engaged their respective


environments, and in this engagement became participants with every-

thing in their place. They affected their places and understood that their

effect had to be accomplished with humility, understanding, and respect

for the sacredness of their place and all living things of that place.”1 Sto-

ries, rituals, and rules gave members of these cultures detailed knowl-

edge of their places.

This knowledge grows organically from a place itself. The poet Gary

Snyder expresses it well: You “hear histories of the people who are your

neighbors and tales involving rocks, streams, mountains, and trees that

are all within your sight. The myths of world-creation tell you how that

mountain was created and how that peninsula came to be there.”2 This

knowledge provides the skills to take the pulse of place and foster its

health. It concerns the creatures one meets on daily travels, the water

one drinks, the trails one hikes. It is accessible to all, gradually accumu-

lated over a lifetime of learning.

Unfortunately, we have largely lost touch with the particular knowl-

edge of particular places, and the result is the placeless sprawl visible

from any highway. “For most Americans,” says Snyder, “to reflect on

‘home place’ would be an unfamiliar exercise. Few today can announce

themselves as someone from somewhere. Almost nobody spends a life-

time in the same valley, working alongside the people they knew as chil-

dren.”3 Ecological design requires us to once again engage our places,

their joys and idiosyncrasies, their wind and water, their pulse and

history.

Jerry Mander’s book In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Tech-

nology and the Survival of the Indian Nations makes a strong case for

the survival value of indigenous knowledge systems. Mander tells an in-

structive story about Inuit caribou hunting on the Ellesmere Islands of

Arctic Canada. Conventionally trained government wildlife managers

told the Inuit to hunt only large or male caribou. The Inuit argued that

this would be catastrophic for the herds, but their opinion went un-

heeded. The Inuit prediction turned out to be accurate. Despite a far

lower hunting limit than that of the previous year, the population

dropped dramatically.

The Inuit hunters knew that in a harsh environment, older and larger

animals are critical for a group’s survival. They have the experience and

physical strength necessary to dig through the winter snow for food.

The Inuit knowledge is grounded in careful observation of caribou be-

havior and is an appropriate basis for the ongoing stewardship of the

caribou herd. As Mander concludes, “The sum total of the commu-

nity’s empirically based knowledge is awesome in breadth and detail,

and often stands in marked contrast to the attenuated data available

from scientific studies of these same populations.”4 Given this level of

care, it is perhaps less surprising that the Inuit have managed to survive

for thousands of years in a difficult and fragile Arctic land.

One of the ancient cultures of the Pacific Northwest, the Kwaakiutl,

practiced a remarkable form of “logging” that took wood from a living

tree. When a tree was cut, “it was considered ‘killed,’ but a standing tree

from which boards were taken had been ‘begged from.’ The straight-

grained trunk was notched 3 feet above the ground, then further up to

the length of the desired boards. As the top notch was widened, yew

wood wedges were pounded into the gap and down the sides, then a

lever was worked from the upper split to the bottom, freeing the new

board without killing the tree.”5 Contrast this simple, humble practice

with the destructive clear-cutting now bleeding life from the old-growth

forests of the Pacific Northwest. Clear-cuts leave a lunar landscape, a

treeless wasteland no longer able to keep soil in place or support wildlife.

The difference between the two logging practices—“begging” from a

standing tree and clear-cutting—is the difference between a fundamen-

tally sustainable culture and a fundamentally unsustainable one.

The botanist Gary Nabhan has spent many years documenting the

subtleties of indigenous agricultural systems in Mexico and the United

States. These systems are exquisitely responsive to place, manifesting

a rich knowledge of local soils, animals, climate, hydrology, and plant

79Solutions Grow from Place

genetics. They often feature local crop varieties, called heirlooms, rep-

resenting “distinctive plant populations, adapted over centuries to spe-

cific microclimates and soils. They have been selected also to fit certain

ethnic agricultural conditions; the field designs, densities, and crop

mixes in which they have been consistently grown.”6 For instance,

Hopi blue corn is structurally suited to deep, eight-to-twelve-inch

plantings in sand, at a level where moisture is available. This enables the

corn to flourish in the difficult conditions of the Southwest.

Traditional agricultural systems typically enhance genetic diversity

through well-established cultural practices. Nabhan stresses the impor-

tance of these practices: “Since heirloom vegetables are by definition

those passed generation to generation through family or clan, they are

best represented in cultural communities where a thread of continuity

has woven through the centuries.”7 Over many generations of plants

and people, a careful partnership between nature and culture allows

hardy varieties to coevolve to meet the vagaries of the environment. In

this way, cultural diversity and biological diversity are inextricably

linked.

In many forests in India, local knowledge of native trees and their

multiple roles has allowed an effective integrated system of agriculture

and forestry. Trees are cut only sparingly, since the role of their roots in

soil and water conservation is well recognized. Leaves and small

branches are used for cooking, as well as for green manure and animal

fodder. Medicines are gathered, fruits are eaten, and seeds are made

into oils. Trunks and large branches are used for housing, commercial

firewood, and timber, and for the construction of carts and agricultural

implements.

Yet these forests rich in tamarind and pongmia, jack and mango, are

rapidly being replaced with eucalyptus monocultures. The range of

original benefits from the forest is being reduced to a single cash crop:

commercial timber. Why? The knowledge system with power, in this

case “scientific forestry,” does not acknowledge the value of any forest


productivity that does not take the form of marketable timber. While

the foresters speak only of profits on timber, the response of the locals is

“What do the forests bear? Soil, water and pure air!” Scientific forestry,

unlike the local knowledge of the forest dwellers, “splits forestry from

agriculture.”8 In the same way, we have allowed engineering, architec-

ture, and other design disciplines to be split from the very local knowl-

edge systems that need to inform them.

As these examples illustrate, traditional cultures have achieved their

longevity by structuring the smallest details of everyday life around the

need to maintain the integrity of the ecosystems upon which they de-

pend. Since these cultures are closely bound to a particular piece of

land, actions have local, rather than global, consequences. If ecological

limits are approached, it is possible to draw back because they are im-

mediately perceived in the form of catastrophic resource losses. Hunt-

ing rights can be temporarily revoked, or land can be left fallow for a

time. Sustaining the health of land, season after season, requires con-

stant adjustment, care, and appropriate forms of knowledge.

In the late twentieth century, there is a deep desire to regain a bal-

ance between culture and nature, to put certain pernicious technologies

back in the bottle, and to question every aspect of the contemporary

landscape. We cannot do this without making bridges to the ecological

wisdom inherent in the practices of traditional cultures. As Cajete sug-

gests, “Indigenous people have demonstrated a way of knowing and re-

lating that must be regained and adapted to a contemporary setting.”9

It is vital that we adapt traditional skills for respecting and preserving

place to the possibilities and constraints inherent in our own technolog-

ical culture.

Bringing Sustainability Home

The skills required to build a sustainable community are already actively

employed in our everyday activities. It is simply a matter of applying


them in the right way. Imagine attending to water, energy, waste, and

land as carefully as you would attend to your garden, your children’s

education, or your money. If these skills are part of the fabric of every-

day life, building sustainable communities is possible. It is one thing

to read about some distant ecological calamity, and it is another to

walk the land, see eroding streambanks, and bring the problem to the

attention of the community. Sustainability begins in modest acts of

responsibility.

In Berkeley, California, a group called Urban Ecology has begun to

make the city streets speak of the land hidden beneath their surface.

The Urban Ecologists have stenciled “creek critters”—frogs, salaman-

ders, salmon, and other creek species—on streets above culverted

creeks and painted the unambiguous warning “NO DUMPING—

DRAINS TO BAY!” next to storm drains around the city. One can no

longer dump motor oil down a drain without remembering that it goes

to a creek and finally out to the San Francisco Bay. In a way, these sten-

cils and warnings recall the deep reverence for this creek or that moun-

tain intrinsic to traditional cultures. The citizens of Berkeley once cul-

verted their creeks and buried their drainage systems, but now some

other citizens are recalling these hidden veins, trying to be responsible

for their health, and making others think of them.

Each such act, as modest as it may seem, contributes to a culture of

sustainability—a shared awareness that can serve to regenerate the

health of both people and ecosystems. We have already inherited the

knowledge for creating such a culture of sustainability in the ecological

wisdom embodied in traditional cultures. This wisdom can take root

even in a highly technological culture if it is consciously nourished,

cherished, and allowed to count for knowledge. Since sustainability is a

cultural process, it depends on the everyday actions of ordinary people.

As we grow better at integrating sustainability into our daily lives, we

will begin to find patterns of awareness and action that are analogous to

those of the Inuit hunters or Hopi cultivators and yet are appropriate to


own our situations.10 These patterns can inform us and offer us guid-

ance, much as ancient stories and rituals have always done. If we re-

create these patterns in a sufficiently rich way, they can perform several

critical roles simultaneously: They can restore our ability to perceive

health and non-health in ourselves and our places so that we may have

some basis for judging the efficacy of our actions. They can break

down the tyranny of inaccessible technical language and allow commu-

nities to work on difficult issues in a fully participatory way. They can

strengthen, rather than weaken, our confidence in our immediate expe-

riences so that we can speak from the heart about our own perceptions.

To the extent that sustainability is imposed by outside forces, it will

fail. Sustainability cannot be mechanically replicated under different

conditions. It will take endless forms, the very diversity of design possi-

bilities helping to ensure that the whole patchwork quilt of technolo-

gies, cultures, and values is sustainable. Bringing sustainability home is

about growing a culture of sustainability that is suited to the particular-

ities of place.

Valuing Local Knowledge

Local knowledge is valuable because it is appropriate. It is exactly what

the Inuit need to live with the caribou or the Hopi to grow corn. It pro-

vides specific information about the climate, plants, trees, animals, wa-

ter flows, and everything else making up the texture of a place. If we are

to minimize destructive ecological impacts in our designs, it is precisely

this kind of knowledge that we need.

One of us once heard a story about a Chilean farmer’s wife. Tasting

her freshly made butter one day, she noticed that it was a little sour. Just

from the taste of the butter, she knew the problem lay in the cow’s diet

and was able to recommend to her husband appropriate crops to cor-

rect the field’s nutrient imbalance. Imagine cultivating a similar sensi-

tivity in our engineering, in our building, in our agriculture!


Local knowledge may be found in the stories that make up a place.

In his rich book The Dream of the Earth, the monk Thomas Berry cele-

brates the bioregional story of his own home, Riverdale, which lies in

the Hudson River valley:

Tell me the story of the river and the valley and the streams and wood-

lands and wetlands, of the shellfish and finfish. Tell me a story. A story of

where we are and how we got here and the characters and roles that we

play. Tell me a story, a story that will be my story as well as the story of

everyone and everything about me, the story that brings us together in a

valley community, a story that brings together the human community

with every living being in the valley, a story that brings us together under

the arc of the great blue sky in the day and the starry heavens at night, a

story that will drench us with rain and dry us in the wind, a story told by

humans to one another that will also be the story that the wood thrush

sings in the thicket, the story that the river recites in its downward jour-

ney, the story that Storm King Mountain images forth in the fullness of

its grandeur.11

Solutions grow from place, out of these stories pollinated by the

generations, by the blending of human nature and wild nature. As our

stories are told afresh, our places begin again to inform our decisions

and our designs. In the Mattole watershed in Northern California, lo-

cals have been working for many years to enhance the failing salmon

run. They have designed their own hatch boxes, carried out extensive

creek restoration efforts, and planted thousands of trees. A generation

of elementary-school children has released salmon into the wild as part

of a watershed-based curriculum. The testimony of participant Freeman

House is eloquent: “The salmon group worked from the assumption

that no one was better positioned to take on the challenge than the

people who inhabited the place. Who else had the special and place-

specific knowledge that the locals had? Who else could ever be expected

to care enough to work the sporadic hours at odd times of the night

and day for little or no pay?”12


Local knowledge is best earned through a steady process of cultural

accretion. The knowledge of the careful farmer or rancher, with his or

her long experience of soil, crops, livestock, and weather, is an irreplace-

able design resource. So is the knowledge of a traditional earth builder,

a craftsperson, a fisherman, a bird watcher, or a rower. The collective

memories of those who inhabit a place provide a powerful map of its

constraints and possibilities. In a sense, ecological design is really just

the unfolding of place through the hearts and minds of its inhabitants.

It embraces the realization that needs can be met in the potentialities of

the landscape and the skills already present in a community.

Sustainability is embedded in processes that occur over very long pe-

riods of time and are not always visually obvious. It follows that ecolog-

ical design works best with people committed to a particular place and

the kinds of local knowledge that grow from that place. This knowledge

is slowly accumulated, season by season, through active engagement

with the land. It concerns the humble details of a place, the smell of a

field after the first fall rain, the derelict factory down the road, the cycles

of decay and renewal, the surprise of previously unnoticed wildflowers.

This knowledge is the prerequisite for maintaining cultural and biologi-

cal diversity both within a local community and in wider habitats. With-

out local knowledge, places erode.

Responding to Complexity

Back in the late 1980s, there was a strong push for Star Wars, a blanket

of satellites that could shoot down enemy missiles in a nuclear war. The

scheme relied on all kinds of fancy technologies including X-ray lasers,

advanced radar systems, and attack and counterattack satellites. One of

the most influential groups opposing the weapons system was the Com-

puter Science Professionals for Social Responsibility (CSPSR). Their ar-

gument was simple: Given that a ten-line computer program probably

won’t work properly the first time through, how can a weapons system


requiring ten million lines of instructions ever be debugged? Testing

such a program thoroughly is not possible because the exigencies of

battle are numerous and unpredictable. CSPSR was arguing that Star

Wars would not work because of the unmanageable complexities inher-

ent in its design.

There are limits to knowledge and therefore limits to management.

David W. Orr puts it this way: “The ecological knowledge and level of

attention necessary to good farming limits the size of farms. Beyond

that limit, the ‘eyes to acres’ ratio is insufficient for land husbandry. At

some larger scale it becomes harder to detect subtle differences in soil

types, changes in plant communities and wildlife habitat, and variations

in topography and microclimate. The memory of past events like floods

and droughts fades. As scale increases, the farmer becomes a manager

who must simplify complexity and homogenize differences in order to

control.”13 Stewardship is quite different from management: it requires

wisdom, restraint, and, above all, a commitment to and understanding

of a particular place. Without enough “eyes to acres,” stewardship is

impossible. Careful attention to detail is lost in the rush to control ever

larger and more unwieldy systems.

The emerging science of complex systems gives us a sobering perspec-

tive from which to view our own managerial crisis of complexity. Com-

plex systems routinely undergo vast reconfigurations and realignments.

Chaos theory tells us that even if we have an exact and deterministic

model of a system that is completely closed to outside influences, we

may have no hope of predicting its behavior beyond a certain time scale.

The systems we deal with as decision makers and citizens are messier:

We have imprecise models with lots of built-in randomness and plenty

of outside influences. Without enough “eyes to acres,” we will be un-

able to respond effectively to subtle ecological feedback. We may be

tempted to homogenize differences in order to control and manage

complexity.

To understand the implications of chaos, let’s begin with the solar

system. Hidden in Newton’s deterministic, clockwork model of gravita-


tional interactions is a long-term unpredictability. Computer simula-

tions suggest that a single pebble passing through the fringes of the so-

lar system will dramatically change planetary orbits over the course of

millions of years. In other words, within this clockwork solar system lies

the potential for the slightest perturbation to become vastly magnified.

If we place Earth but a hair off course, that deviation will eventually be

compounded to millions of miles. In a similar way, a butterfly flapping

its wings in Madagascar can cause a hailstorm in Kansas two months

later. This butterfly effect is inherently scale linking, allowing micro-

scopic interactions to be amplified until they affect events even at a large

scale. The microcosmos and the macrocosmos interpenetrate.

Since the butterfly effect renders exact long-term prediction impos-

sible, we need to ask new kinds of questions. We can use the butterfly

effect as a way of understanding our own crisis of complexity. Very tan-

gible policy issues around fisheries, forests, greenhouse emissions, and

so on are infused with so much complexity that we cannot hope to

model them accurately enough to yield precise, certifiable results.

When we compound a system’s intrinsic capacity for enormously com-

plex behavior with our own uncertain, incomplete models, we are left

with a partial understanding at best. Perhaps we can peg a variable

within wide limits or find certain loose correlations, but we are unlikely

to be able to provide rigorous answers to key management questions.

What climatic response can we expect from such-and-such level of car-

bon dioxide emissions? Is this truly a sustainable timber yield? The new

sciences of complexity, far from increasing our confidence in answering

such questions, are really telling us that systems are more delicate than

we thought they were, and that guarantees of safety for our environ-

mental interventions will be difficult to find.

The limits to knowledge implied by complex systems suggest that we

cannot scientifically “manage” systems beyond a certain scale. Without

a sufficient “eyes to acres” ratio, we will be overwhelmed by complex-

ity. Hence, a vital role is opened for those on the land to participate in

decisions at all levels. The understanding we need to restore and work


with ecosystems of all kinds is distributed among those who know those

ecosystems well. Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva puts it this

way: “The ordinary Indian woman who worships the tulsi plant wor-

ships the cosmic as symbolized in the plant. The peasants who treat

seeds as sacred, see in them the connection to the universe. . . . In most

sustainable traditional cultures, the great and the small have been linked

so that limits, restraints, responsibilities are always transparent and can-

not be externalized. The great exists in the small and hence every act

has not only global but cosmic implications.”14 Humble local acts, each

respecting the whole web of life, add up to a sustainable culture.

To increase the “eyes to acres” ratio, we need to change the way we

think about knowledge and design. We need to scale our designs both

to the limits of ecosystems and to the limits of human understanding.

This has the immediate advantage of bringing sophisticated forms of lo-

cal knowledge into play. In turn, this local knowledge can inform the

design process, providing it a high level of ecological sensitivity and

appropriateness.

Designing for Place

Only a few generations ago, it would have been absurd to suggest that

one should design and build in ways that did not reflect local climate,

materials, landforms, and customs. The design of human habitat was

limited to local resources, abilities, and ways of doing things. Buildings

tended to follow patterns that were well adapted to local conditions.

Designing with and for place was the rule and not the exception.

Examples are provided by the indigenous domestic architecture that

has developed in each climatic region. Desert villages across the world

are built of thick walls of mud or stone with small windows, features de-

signed to maintain cool interior temperatures. The dwellings are tightly

clustered to shade each other. Huts in tropical deltas and forests are of-

ten raised up on stilts, providing welcome breezes and protection from


the wet ground. Walls are woven and roof is thatched from local leaves

such as palm. Roofs are steep to shed rain. The dwellings that evolved in

the temperate forests of Europe and North America were built of logs

and timbers, with steep roofs and overhangs to shed rain and snow. The

nomadic herders of the plains of Asia, Africa, and North America

evolved portable shelters consisting of light wooden frames covered

with a double insulating wall constructed of animal skins.

In this century, tried and tested design adaptations to place have

been abandoned in favor of standardized modern templates designed to

be conveniently dropped into any situation and any location. As we

have seen, these templates require extravagant amounts of energy and

materials and destroy landscapes wholesale. They also erode local and

regional differences. As the twentieth century comes to a close, places

and cultures are being bulldozed into a planetary geography of

nowhere. In this destructive context, the task of ecological design is to

re-create design solutions deeply adapted to place. Both the lessons of

indigenous design and sophisticated new ecological technologies are

critical to this task.

An example of this approach is provided by an unbuilt design for the

Ojai Foundation School by Sim Van der Ryn & Associates (figures 7–

9). Ojai is about an hour’s drive east of Santa Barbara on the central

California coast. The climate—hot, dry summers and mild winters—is

typical of an interior Mediterranean valley. The site, a saddle on a grassy

ridge, was located through a consensual community process in which

members silently walked the land until each found the spot that felt best

to them. The program called for a “learning village” including student

rooms, faculty residences, office, library, kitchen, dining area, and med-

itation hall. The plan is organized around a large central elliptical com-

mon space. Tiers of housing are arrayed on the south side of the ellipse

with each tier shading the other. Common facilities are placed on the

north side. The basic building material is soil excavated on-site. Six to

12 percent Portland cement (or fly ash, a waste product of electric


power plants) is added, and the mixture is pneumatically rammed into

reinforced formwork to make a two-foot-thick, durable, earthquake-

resistant wall. This technology—known as rammed earth or pisé—is a

modern adaptation of an approach used in China, Europe, and North

Africa for centuries. The thick walls provide a thermal barrier that keeps

interior rooms cool in hot weather.

The Ojai project also incorporates a passive cooling tower based on

an ancient design. Throughout the Middle East, breezes were caught in

towers and channeled over water pools to create a simple form of evap-

orative cooling. The Environmental Research Laboratory at the Uni-

versity of Arizona has developed an improved version of this design. A


FIGURE 7. Model photo of Ojai Foundation School

FIGURE 8. Overall section of Ojai Foundation School

small amount of water is misted through baffles at the top of the tower

to cool the air, which then flows down to the tower’s base in a constant,

refreshing stream.

Water is scarce in Ojai, an area with low annual rainfall. Rain falling

on the rooftops is channeled to a concrete reservoir under the common

area, where it is stored for later use to irrigate the orchard and garden.

The plumbing system sends sewage to a septic tank and recycles kitchen

and bath water (graywater) in the garden. The low electrical demand is

provided on-site through photovoltaic arrays.

A very different response to a very different place is demonstrated in

Sim Van der Ryn & Associates’ design for the Lindisfarne Association

Center in Crestone, Colorado. Located in the foothills of the Sangre de

Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado, the site experiences extremely

cold, windy, but sunny days in winter and a short, warm summer. Place

prescribed a design that both maximizes the warming winter sun and

minimizes the freezing winter winds. The design is a long, south-facing

rectangle with lots of glass. The north wall and roof, both heavily insu-

lated, are covered with soil to reduce the effect of wind and to stabilize

temperature. The basic materials are primarily local rubble stone


FIGURE 9. Special features of Ojai Foundation School

dumped into forms and pine timbers harvested from local trees killed

by bark beetles. In spite of extreme winters in which wind chill can

reach –60 degrees Fahrenheit, the space, heated only with an energy-

efficient wood stove, remains above 55 degrees. This design makes ex-

tensive use of passive solar principles and technologies. Simple tools

now available allow designers to predict year-round sun and shade pat-

terns at a given site.

Ecological design begins with the particularities of place—the cli-

mate, topography, soils, water, plants and animals, flows of energy and

materials, and other factors. The task is to integrate the design with

these conditions in a way that respects the health of the place. The de-

sign works when it articulates new relationships within a context that

preserves the relevant ecological structure.15

Consider wetlands. Their internal processes enable them to absorb

nutrients, detoxify substances, and remove pathogens. Artificial wet-

lands—known as constructed wetlands—are now being seeded and

maintained specifically to purify wastewater. When a constructed wet-

land is carefully matched to the level and type of wastewater it will re-

ceive, it can both reclaim nutrients and provide exceptionally clean wa-

ter. In this way, some of our own wastes can be integrated within

existing ecological cycles. The constructed wetland creates a new

waste/landscape relationship that keeps nutrients on-site, prevents

downstream water from being polluted, and provides additional habitat.

Ecological design works with the inherent integrities of a given

place, recognizing that the extent to which we rely on far-flung re-

sources is the extent to which we are no longer accountable to our own

place. It is possible to temporarily live far beyond our local means, but

only at the expense of destructive ecological subsidies from somewhere

else. According to the plant geneticist Wes Jackson, we are “unlikely to

achieve anything close to sustainability in any area unless we work for

the broader goal of becoming native in the modern world, and that

means becoming native to our places in a coherent community that is in


turn embedded in the ecological realities of its surrounding land-

scape.”16 By integrating design within the limits of place—as in the

case of constructed wetlands—we make it respond to these ecological

realities.

Twenty years ago, solar architect Steve Baer pointed out the

“clothesline paradox”: We drill for oil in Alaska, send it through pipe -

lines, refine it, and ship it to an oil-fired electrical utility. The oil is

burned, producing steam to push turbines that generate electricity. The

electricity is sent out to the grid, traveling hundreds of miles with trans-

mission losses along the way, and thence to your clothes dryer. Here the

electrical energy is converted to the mechanical energy of the revolving

drum and the thermal energy of the heating coil in your dryer, allowing

your clothes to dry. On the other hand, you could have just hung your

clothes out to dry on a clothesline!

The clothesline paradox is a good metaphor for our inability to per-

ceive locally available solutions. The clothesline replaces reliance on a

distant and ecologically unsound energy system with an everyday ambi-

ent resource: warm air. In the same way, ecological design replaces con-

ventional resource-intensive approaches with information-rich, locally

adapted solutions. We begin with the particularities of place and ask,

What can be done with ecological integrity here? How can we provide

energy in this region? How can we provide water without adversely af-

fecting hydrological cycles? How can we provide shelter without de-

stroying forests?

Of course, the solutions will vary strongly from place to place. It is a

matter of listening to what the land wants to be. It is said that in order to

restore native vegetation, one begins with the area where it is most

strongly established. Weed out non-native species, making space for the

natives. In a few seasons, the range of the natives will increase, and they

will bring their own propitious microclimate with them, eventually al-

lowing them to recover much of their original vigor. It is a simple

method, predicated only on a knowledge of local vegetation. In a similar


way, ecological design seeks to gradually restore the healthy functioning

of the landscape by allowing its original processes to return.

We are not proposing some kind of stylistic “regionalism” in design.

We are speaking of paying rigorous attention—in the design process it-

self—to flows of matter and energy, to the characteristics of soil and cli-

mate, and even to the subtleties of habitat. Choosing to honor the in-

tegrity of ecological processes places strong constraints on design, and

these constraints must be met locally as well as regionally and globally.

By doing this, we can create systems that mesh so closely with nature’s

own regenerative processes that they begin to actively participate in

them.

The common camel exemplifies the appropriateness to place that

pervades nature’s own evolutionary design. In the early morning, the

camel browses vegetation for moisture. Some of this water is metaboli-

cally stored for later use in its fat layer, which doubles as a highly effec-

tive thermal insulator. During the day, the camel’s own body is used as a

thermal mass, and its temperature is allowed to increase to a threshold

unusually high for mammals. Throughout this process, the camel mini-

mizes water loss by producing concentrated urine. When the upper

threshold of body temperature is reached, a special adaptation allows

the camel to dry out while maintaining the health of its blood cells.

When the temperature finally drops, the fat layer can be concentrated in

the camel’s humps, reducing its insulating effect and permitting faster

cooling.

The camel’s various adaptations—metabolic water from fat, con-

centrated urine, variable body temperature, low water loss in blood,

humps—allow it to function effectively in the harsh desert climate. The

camel, through its very physiology, can withstand extremes of tempera-

ture that would kill most organisms. It is exquisitely adapted to place.17

In contrast, sealed, centrally heated office buildings are like ostriches

with their heads in the sand, doing everything but responding to place.

If we begin to think of buildings themselves as organisms with func-


tional relationships to their environment, new possibilities emerge. In

designer Day Chahroudi’s vision, the building is a “one-celled orga -

nism whose environment contains all the necessary nutrients and also

some hostile elements. . . . Using the selective permeability of its roof

or walls the building exhibits homeostasis, perhaps the most basic prop-

erty of living things.”18 The selective permeability is obtained by coat-

ing the inside of an ordinary window with a heat-reflective layer. The

window lets in light but traps reradiated heat. This helps to allow a

building, with proper solar orientation, to adapt itself to the local cli-

mate. In such a design, the harsh walls favored by industrial designers

become softened to biological membranes, echoing the camel’s adapta-

tions. The building stays warmer in cold weather and cooler in warm

weather.

Knowing the details of local climate is often the key to place-

responsive architectural design. The Bateson Building in Sacramento

was designed by the Office of the California State Architect with the ex-

plicit goal of reducing energy consumption by 75 percent (figures 10and 11). In most office buildings, the biggest energy requirements are


FIGURE 10. Exterior of Bateson Building


FIGURE 11. Courtyard of Bateson Building

for artificial lighting and air conditioning. The Bateson Building relies

primarily on daylighting through a floor plan in which no desk is more

than forty feet from a natural source of light. A careful study of climate

data showed that while the city often experienced a week of days over

one hundred degrees during the summer, evening temperatures dipped

into the fifties because of cool air creeping up the Sacramento River

from San Francisco Bay. This became the heart of the climatic design

strategy. The square-block building was designed around a large, four-

story atrium under which was placed hundreds of tons of rock. During

summer days, the building’s heat is absorbed by the thermal mass of the

rock. At night, large fans flush the thermal energy stored in the rock out

into the cool evening air. The building is also provided with motorized

shades that block incoming sunlight as necessary.

Just as the camel fits its desert niche and well-designed solar build-

ings fit their climates, ecological designs fit their places in rich and sur-

prising ways. The knowledge needed to create them is inevitably place-

specific. Already in the 1940s, Lewis Mumford proposed anchoring

education at all levels with a kind of “regional survey.” This survey be-

comes “the backbone of a drastically revised method of study, in which

every aspect of the sciences and the arts is ecologically related from the

bottom up, in which they connect directly and constantly in the stu-

dent’s experience of his region and his community.”19 It embraces a

careful study of both the local environment and the businesses, institu-

tions, and people that make up a place.

In Austin, Texas, Pliny Fisk and the Center for Maximum Potential

Building Systems (Max’s Pot) have rigorously pursued the implications

of Mumford’s “regional survey.” Max’s Pot’s most fully realized project

to date is the Laredo Demonstration Blueprint Farm, a two-acre farm at

the edge of Laredo, Texas. This project responds to the climate, mineral

resources, vegetation, and soil of its region, which lies in a transition

zone between the arid Southwest and the prairie grasslands. The farm,

located near the Rio Grande, features a small orchard, shaded areas for


growing, several storage sheds, cisterns, wind generators, and an on-site

treatment system for agricultural wastes.

Max’s Pot begins every project by looking to the ecologically appro-

priate designs indigenous to other biomes—biological regions—around

the globe that have a similar climate and vegetation (figure 12). In

Texas, the scrubby mesquite tree is regarded as a nuisance and ruth-

lessly cleared away. In the badlands of Argentina, though, it has long

been used for floor tiles. On the Laredo farm, mesquite tiles are used

for permeable paving. In a similar fashion, the farm’s cooling towers in

the storage sheds—similar to those in the Ojai design—were borrowed

from Iran.

Max’s Pot seeks regionally appropriate building systems that are

“predicated on the uniqueness of place.”20 These systems catalyze local

economies because they create local jobs right from materials extraction

through processing and actual construction. At the farm, crops are

shaded by a flexible network of poles, cables, and polyester panels. The

poles are old oil-rig drilling stems found in a nearby junkyard. The

farm’s sheds were built with straw bales, a readily available agricultural

waste. The roof supports are a clever latticework of locally fabricated

thin steel trusses and decking. Concrete floor slabs will soon be mixed

on-site with the locally available minerals pozzolan, lime, and caliche.

The design of the Laredo farm clearly grows from place, responding


FIGURE 12. Biomes similar to Laredo’s

to the area’s unique constellation of factors: Generators utilize the

wind, cistern catchment systems capture rainfall, the crop-shading sys-

tem and cooling towers provide protection from the sun, and agricul-

tural wastes are treated before reaching the Rio Grande. It also uses lo-

cal resources—vegetation (mesquite tiles) and minerals (caliche, lime,

pozzolan, iron trusses)—and locally produced wastes (straw bales).

Max’s Pot is “mining for the knowledge to capitalize on local resources

. . . and local farmers, metalworkers, and builders to sustain the small

Blueprint Farm community and, by extension, dozens of such set-

tlements on the periphery of existing cities.”21 By responding in an

information-rich, energy-poor, and materials-frugal manner to a de-

manding landscape, the Laredo farm minimizes destructive ecological

impacts.

At a large scale, basic issues become imponderable puzzles. What

“economic value” should be assigned to the biodiversity of a tropical

forest? What is the “optimal” level of greenhouse gas emissions? In each

case, we seek an overly simple quantitative answer to a swelter of com-

plexity. When we return to a human scale, these problems begin to


FIGURE 13. Distribution of building materials in Texas

resolve themselves. Design is accountable to place when we can read

the consequences of our actions right on the landscape. It is not ac-

countable to place when it relies on hidden, far-off ecological subsidies

ranging from the destruction of forests to the poisoning of waters and

acidification of lakes. Neglect occurs in one place at the expense of in-

tractable problems somewhere else. A project like the Laredo farm

works because it is firmly grounded in the constraints and opportunities

of a particular, well-defined region.

Notes

1. Gregory Cajete, Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Educa-tion (Durango, Colo.: Kivaki Press, 1994), 87.

2. Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point Press,1990), 26.

3. Ibid., 25.4. Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and

the Survival of the Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991),258–9.

5. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton, Native American Architecture (NewYork: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 247.

6. Gary Paul Nabhan, Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture andWild Plant Conservation (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989), 71.

7. Ibid., 72.8. Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and

Biotechnology (London: Zed Books, 1993), 14.9. Cajete, Look to the Mountain, 79.

10. We are indebted to Katy Langstaff for her provocative notion of a “pat-tern for sustainability.”

11. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra ClubBooks, 1990), 171–2.

12. Freeman House, “To Learn the Things We Need to Know: Engagingthe Particulars of the Planet’s Recovery,” in Home! A Bioregional Reader, ed.Van Andruss et al. (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers,1990), 112.

13. David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Post-modern World (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1992), 35–6.


14. Vandana Shiva, “The Greening of the Global Reach,” in Global Ecology:A New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books,1993), 154.

15. Thanks to Katy Langstaff for some helpful discussions on the related no-tion of structure-preserving transformations.

16. Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place (Lexington: Univ. Press ofKentucky, 1994), 3.

17. See. R. J. Putman and S. D. Wratten, Principles of Ecology (Berkeley andLos Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1984), 40–1.

18. Day Chahroudi, “Buildings as Organisms,” in Soft-Tech, ed. J. Baldwinand Stewart Brand (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 43.

19. Lewis Mumford, Values for Survival (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.,1946), 151–2.

20. John Todd originated this phrase.21. Ray Don Tilley, “Blueprint for Survival,” Architecture 80, no. 5 (May

1991): 70.


SECOND PRINCIPLE

EcologicalAccounting Informs Design

103

Trace the environmental impacts of existing or proposed designs. Use

this information to determine the most ecologically sound design

possibility.

Ecological Accounting

All of us are familiar with the conventions of economic accounting. No

design gets very far without accompanying budgets, spreadsheets, parts

lists, and so forth. Unfortunately, we have largely failed to consider the

parallel set of accounts that link designs to the health of ecosystems.

These accounts cover acres of abused land, kilowatt-hours of energy,

gallons of water, pounds of eroded soil, and all the other environmental

impacts of a design. Just as standard accounting procedures allow us to

determine how money is acquired and spent, ecological accounting

procedures provide a way of tracking ecologically relevant variables.

For several decades, ecologists have produced detailed studies of the

flow of energy and materials through ecosystems. Ecological account-

ing requires us to do the same for products, buildings, landscapes, and

entire communities. As Wes Jackson observes, sustainability will result

from “our becoming better ecological accountants at the community

level. If we must as a future necessity recycle essentially all materials and

run on sunlight, then our future will depend on accounting as the most

important and interesting discipline.”1 Careful ecological accounting

provides an accurate measure of the environmental impacts of designs,

allowing these impacts to inform the design process.

Suppose the Acme factory upriver is polluting your favorite fishing

hole. While the factory may be within its legal emissions limit, its activi-

ties nevertheless have a direct bearing on the health of the river and

your enjoyment of it. The pollution, even though free for the polluter,

represents a cost to you. In the language of economics, the pollution is


an externality; that is, it impacts only third parties not directly involved

in buying and selling Acme’s products.

Externalities create a tension between economic accounting and

ecological accounting. In a world rife with externalities—from acid rain

to global warming and ozone depletion—minimizing economic costs

often maximizes environmental and social costs borne in the form of

pollution, habitat destruction, and sickness. Market prices fail to reflect

wider environmental costs because those costs do not show up in con-

ventional economic accounting. There are few markets in clean air, wa-

ter, and soil.

Ecological accounting is a way of gathering information for making

design decisions in the absence of prices that accurately reflect overall

ecological costs. Consider the greenhouse emissions associated with pe-

troleum fuels. While the 1973 OPEC embargo raised the specter of pe-

troleum scarcity, the 1990s have raised the equally disturbing specter of

petroleum abundance. As a strong scientific consensus on the green-

house effect now indicates, continuing present rates of fossil fuel con-

sumption will lead to an increase of five to ten degrees Fahrenheit in

global mean temperature by the midpoint of the next century. This will

lead to massive crop failures, catastrophic monsoons in Southeast Asia,

loss of vast ranges of habitat, and a host of presently unpredictable side

effects.

The consensus greenhouse scenario is so disturbing that it can only

be considered a threat to global security. Meanwhile, U.S. emissions of

carbon dioxide are not taxed or regulated in any significant way even

though steep energy taxes have sharply reduced energy consumption in

Europe and Japan. Petroleum prices provide a textbook example of the

inability of markets alone to guarantee a livable future. While markets

accurately reflect supply and demand, they are clearly insufficient to en-

sure the environmental preconditions for life on this planet.

If prices reflected underlying environmental impacts, there would be

plenty of incentive to design products that were ecologically sound. In

such a system, these products would end up being cheaper, not more ex-

pensive. Paul Hawken has proposed such a system in The Ecology of

Commerce: “To create an enduring society, we will need a system of

commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sus-

tainable and restorative. . . . Just as every act in an industrial society

leads to environmental degradation, regardless of intention, we must

design a system where the opposite is true, where doing good is like

falling off a log, where the natural, everyday acts of work and life accu-

mulate into a better world as a matter of course, not a matter of con-

scious altruism.”2

In the absence of such a sensibly designed system of commerce, eco-

logically sound products come to market at a higher price than their de-

structive counterparts. Everyday acts, like purchasing pesticide-laden

produce, have effects that are hidden to the purchaser. Without con-

sulting an ecological shopping guide or deliberately looking for pro-

duce that is “certified organic,” one may unintentionally promote an

essentially dysfunctional economy. The onus is placed on the careful

choices of informed consumers who are willing to pay more to decrease

their own environmental impacts.

The gap between economic accounting and ecological accounting

presents an exciting challenge for ecological designers. When minimiz-

ing environmental impacts coincides with saving money, as in the case

of many energy- and water-efficiency measures, the choice is clear.

When minimizing impacts seems to require greater expense, as in the

case of nontoxic finishes or paints, the choice becomes more compli-

cated. How much extra money should be spent for what level of re-

duced impact?

Ecological design brings these considerations to the forefront of the

design process. It asks us to explicitly consider the environmental im-

pacts of everything we include in a design, from the energy use of a

building to the toxicity of a product. The goal is then to improve the

ecological accounts—by decreasing energy and materials use, reducing

105Ecological Accounting Informs Design

toxicity, and lessening other impacts—while maintaining a sensible

bud get. Often the large cost savings from one set of ecologically sound

design choices can help offset the extra expenses associated with an-

other set. In other cases, design decisions that are individually more ex-

pensive may yield a synergistic effect that makes them collectively

cheaper. For instance, a highly effective passive solar design might

pay for itself by eliminating the need for central heating and cooling

systems.

Ecological accounting begins with a careful choice of accounts. Typ-

ical accounts cover the type and quantity of energy, water, materials,

toxins, wastes, and land used in a design. In an agricultural context, we

might pay particular attention to energy, water, land, soil, and key nu-

trients. In an office building, energy, buildings materials, and toxins

would require special scrutiny. In a product design, energy, materials,

toxins, and wastes would be most important. These accounts can be

kept with varying levels of precision, but they should reflect—at least

qualitatively—the most significant environmental impacts incurred by a

design.

Ecological accounting also requires us to choose boundaries of space

and time for our inquiry. If we trace all of the impacts of a design over

its complete history, we are performing life-cycle analysis. In this case,

discussed in the next section, we sum impacts over the lifetime of a de-

sign. In the final section, “Following the Flows,” we examine the flows

of resources needed to sustain a given building, campus, or town in its

daily operations. In both cases, a consistent, meaningful choice of

boundaries helps to focus the ecological accounting procedure and lend

it greater relevance to the design problem at hand.

Suppose we were to set up the ecological accounts for two familiar

processes: gasoline combustion and photosynthesis. Let us represent a

process—respiration, combustion, distillation, and so on—by a circle.

Inputs like steel, oxygen, energy, and water are shown by an arrow en-

tering the circle. Outputs, including both useful products and wastes,


are shown by an arrow leaving the circle. With these conventions, gaso-

line combustion and photosynthesis may be depicted as in figures 14and 15.

Industrial processes like gasoline combustion typically manifest a sin-

gle century or less of human design ingenuity. These processes often ac-

complish their narrow objectives well, but at great ecological cost. Usu-

ally, they are resource intensive, running at very high temperatures and

pressures. Their waste products include substances so toxic that they

are dangerous even at a level of one part per billion or less. While the

processes of nature have been tested over geological time and of neces-

sity fit with the fabric of life, industrial processes have severe impacts

that can be reduced only through a conscious design effort.

In the case of gasoline combustion, the energy-rich fuel is derived

from millions of years of photosynthetic activity. When one gallon of

gasoline is burned, it produces twenty pounds of carbon dioxide as well

as trace quantities of other substances like nitrogen and sulfur oxides


FIGURE 14. Gasoline combustion

FIGURE 15. Photosynthesis

and ozone. When this process is replicated in thousands of cars driving

around a city, it results in smog and regional acid rain. When it is repli-

cated in millions of cars all over the planet, it results in a massive contri-

bution to the greenhouse effect.

Industrial processes are extravagant in their use of energy and mate-

rials and dangerous in their production of wastes. In contrast, nature’s

own metabolic processes, like photosynthesis and fermentation, are fru-

gal and pollution free. Indeed, “compared with the elegance and econ-

omy of biological processes . . . most existing industrial processes ap-

pear to be far from their potential ultimate efficiency in terms of the

basic chemical and energy pathways they use.”3 While nitrogen-fixing

bacteria quietly perform their work in the soil, we require three hun-

dred times standard pressure and temperatures upwards of eight hun-

dred degrees Fahrenheit to accomplish the same purpose in fertilizer

plants.

In photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water are trans-

formed into a common sugar, dextrose. Photosynthesis is a remarkably

elegant process, one that took three billion years of evolutionary design

to perfect. It converts a common waste product of respiration (carbon

dioxide) into two vital substances, sugar and oxygen. Unlike gasoline

combustion, photosynthesis produces no waste products. It runs at

everyday temperatures and pressures and is fueled by sunlight and wa-

ter. Not surprisingly, ecological accounting greatly favors photosynthe-

sis over gasoline combustion!

All processes must obey two simple laws of energy accounting. The

first law tells us that the energy stored in the inputs must equal the en-

ergy stored in the outputs plus any waste energy. In the case of gasoline

combustion, the chemical energy stored in the gasoline is converted to

the mechanical energy of the piston together with waste heat.

The second law tells us that energy degrades in quality or usefulness

as it is converted from one form to another. While the chemical energy

of gasoline can easily be released at any time with a match, the dispersed


heat energy from combustion can be only partially recovered. In any

process, energy will become decreasingly available for further use, or,

equivalently, entropy will increase.

These two laws form the backbone of thermodynamics, and they

have been helping engineers and physicists work with energetic trans-

formations for more than a century. Twenty years ago, Amory Lovins, a

physicist by training, applied these laws to the entire energy system of

the United States. He realized that “people do not want electricity or

oil, nor such economic abstractions as ‘residential services,’ but rather

comfortable rooms, light, vehicular motion, food, tables, and other real

things. Such end-use needs can be classified by the physical nature of

the task to be done.”4 He argued that the quality of energy supply

should be matched to its end use, for example, keeping a room com-

fortable or running a motor. To use a high-quality energy source, such

as electricity, for a low-quality end use, such as heating the leaky bag of

air we call a house, was entropically insane, much like cutting butter

with a nuclear-powered chainsaw. His radical pronouncements in the

1970s—“Stop living in sieves,” “Stop driving petropigs”—have been

translated into policy in many countries.

In Soft Energy Paths, Lovins was able to show that U.S. electricity

consumption could be cut drastically without sacrificing any end-use

benefits. The key is efficiency: fewer steps in the energy delivery process,

each better designed to minimize wasted energy. The arithmetic is clear:

The overall efficiency is the product of the efficiencies at each step. If

each step is 70 percent efficient, and this is an optimistic figure, then a

three-step process will be just 34 percent efficient, and a five-step

process just 17 percent efficient.

If the overall efficiency increases, then the level of end-use benefits

may be maintained even as the energy input declines. Lovins has shown

that if all Americans adopted the highest-efficiency refrigerators avail-

able instead of their present masterpieces of dumb design, the energy

saved would allow two dozen nuclear reactors to be shut down. He


has also been able to show utilities and their regulators that meeting

demand through efficiency is cheaper than increasing supply. Outfitting

customers with energy-efficient lights is more sensible, both economi-

cally and environmentally, than building a new coal-fired utility.

There are already burgeoning markets in energy efficiency or nega -

watts. A negawatt, or negative watt, is a unit of decreased energy de-

mand, just as a conventional watt is a unit of increased energy supply.

Electrical utilities or large customers can purchase decreased energy

loads—i.e., negawatts—from energy services companies (ESCOs) that

provide them through a clever combination of high-efficiency lights,

motors, and appliances; physical plant improvements; weatherproofing;

and so on. One common arrangement is for an ESCO to offer to split

the energy savings with a business. The ESCO purchases and installs the

appropriate energy-saving equipment for the customer. The ESCO pays

for the installation and maintenance of the equipment itself; its return is

a reasonable share of the energy savings resulting from these changes.

The customer bears no risk and gets solid energy savings without

spending hundreds of hours doing research on energy efficiency. We

may hope for eventual markets in negagallons of water, negatons of

toxic waste, and negabarrels of oil!

All processes must also obey a fundamental law of materials account-

ing: matter is neither created nor destroyed. If a carbon atom enters the

process, a carbon atom must leave the process. This law tells us that the

carbon and sulfur in gasoline must be accounted for in a car’s emissions.

The carbon is emitted largely as carbon dioxide, while the sulfur is emit-

ted in the form of oxides contributing to acid rain. Matter that fails to

appear in useful products must contribute to the waste stream: there is

no other possibility. A great deal of useful information can be obtained

by carefully balancing the materials accounts.

In an effort to address materials accounting, many nations are now

scrambling to set up a system of national ecological accounts. These ac-

counts attempt to quantify the natural wealth—forests, minerals, air,


soil, water, and so on—upon which their economic wealth depends. A

World Resources Institute case study of Indonesia from 1971 to 1984demonstrates this idea. Although Indonesia’s gross national product in-

creased by 7.1 percent annually, adjustments for resource losses—deple-

tion of petroleum reserves, forests, and soils—lowered the growth rate

to just 4 percent. Indonesia’s efforts to rapidly “mine” its own natural

wealth resulted in a burst of apparent economic growth that might well

cripple its own long-term economic prospects.5

Ecological accounting—whether at the level of an industrial process,

product, building, community, or nation—provides a coherent frame-

work for assessing environmental impacts. It allows us to think more

carefully about the connections between ecology and design. Ecologi-

cal accounting is the key analytical tool of ecological design, for it pro-

vides a kind of litmus test for sustainability.

Life-Cycle Analysis

Each object has a history of its own. Your favorite chair, for example,

probably was made from wood harvested hundreds of miles away in a

logging operation that entailed a network of fellers, roads, and trucks.

From there, the wood was milled and sent to a factory for assembly into

a chair. At the factory, resins, adhesives, and varnishes were applied as

the chair took form. Finally, the chair was packaged, shipped, ware-

housed, shipped, retailed, and brought home. In several decades, it will

probably grow quite rickety, at which time its owner can repair it, junk

it, or salvage it in some way.

In a deep sense, the chair embodies the materials, energy, water, and

land used during its production and distribution. In other words, these

impacts need to be charged against its ecological accounts. The chair is

connected, in a tangible way, to the health of streams, forests, and

mountains across North America. The Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat

Hanh expresses it this way: “When we look at a chair, we see the wood,


but we fail to observe the tree, the forest, the carpenter, or our own

mind. When we meditate on it, we can see the entire universe in all its

interwoven and interdependent relations in the chair. The presence of

the wood reveals the presence of the tree. The presence of the leaf re-

veals the presence of the sun.”6 Ecological design recognizes that all

problems—hence, all solutions—spring from this connectedness.

Looking at environmental impacts over time, we are led to examine

the entire histories of the things we use. We need to understand the

processes responsible for their creation and decide whether they con-

serve or squander materials and energy, whether they are toxic or be-

nign, and whether they enhance or diminish the health of those who do

the work at each stage. Ecological design demands that we ask of every-

thing we use, “What was sacrificed to create it? What harm to people,

animals, and nature was caused by its creation? Or was it created with

love which helped people, animals and nature along the way? That is,

we have to ask very hard questions of the economic process and we

have to apply human and ecological values. . . . Can we now, fully in-

formed, lay claim to this thing and love this thing?”7 This kind of life-

cycle analysis revolves around a detailed understanding of the impacts

incurred during an entire life-cycle, from the extraction of raw materials

through manufacturing, use, and eventual recycling or discarding.

Peter Bahouth, the current director of the Turner Foundation, has

gone to some trouble to research and write a kind of ecological biogra-

phy of a typical North American tomato that begins to suggest the envi-

ronmental ramifications of industrial agriculture. He calls it “The

North American Regional Report, or the Attack of the Killer Tomato,”

and addresses it to “nervous eaters.”8

As Bahouth describes it, the tomato was grown on Mexican land tra-

ditionally used by Mexican farmers involved in cooperatives, or ejidos.

The seed was a hybrid—based on a Mexican strain—now patented by a

genetic engineering firm that relied on taxpayer-funded research by the

University of California, Davis. The land was fumigated with methyl-

bromide, one of the most ozone-depleting chemicals in existence. It


was then inundated with toxic pesticides. The production waste from

the pesticide manufacturing process was sent to the world’s largest toxic

dump in Emelle, Alabama, which happens to sit next to a poor African

American community.

Mexican farmworkers, displaced from the ejidos, were given no pro-

tection from the pesticides they applied. Nor were they given any in-

struction in the proper application of these dangerous substances. The

workers make about $2.50 a day and have no access to health care.

The tomato was put on a plastic tray, covered in plastic wrap, and

then placed in cardboard boxes. The plastic was manufactured with

chlorine from Point Comfort, Texas. Residents of Point Comfort face

manifold health effects from exposure to dioxins, extremely toxic

byproducts of chlorine manufacture. The cardboard began as part of a

300-year-old ancient forest in British Columbia, was processed in the

Great Lakes, and was then shipped by the United Trucking Company

to Latin American farms. The whole process was fueled by oil from the

Gulf of Campeche, Mexico, extracted by Chevron and processed by

PEMEX, the Mexican national oil company.

The boxed tomatoes themselves were artificially ripened by applying

ether. Now tasteless and nutritionally impaired, the tomatoes were sent

by refrigerated trucks throughout the continent. The trucks and distri-

bution centers rely on ozone-depleting CFC cooling equipment. Fi-

nally, the tomato arrived, weary and watery, in the salad on your plate.

Bahouth’s tomato was not deliberately chosen as a particularly de-

structive product. Performing some ecological accounting for this

tomato, he uncovered a vast web of environmental side effects rang-

ing from ozone depletion to dioxin contamination to global warming.

The life-cycle of an orange, toothbrush, or appointment book would

reveal a similar web of effects. While Bahouth’s tomato does not single-

handedly destroy cultures, disfigure landscapes, or change the climate,

it is an integral part of a system that does all of these things. The dam-

age is done slowly, cumulatively, through a series of small failures of de-

sign and conscience.


The Environmental Protection Agency has already set up a formal

life-cycle analysis project for use in regulating products and processes.9

This project is attempting to standardize life-cycle analysis methodol-

ogy so that it can be used by industry and government alike. One of its

prototype examples is a bar of soap, which turns out to be implicated in

a surprisingly complex web of processes. Its ingredients include sodium

hydroxide, tallow, chemicals, pigments, and fragrances. Sodium hy-

droxide leads us to a rock-salt mining process, and tallow to the cattle

industry. In fact, the entire soap manufacturing process is just the be-

ginning of another series of processes extending from packaging to re-

tailing and consuming.

A life-cycle analysis like this one is an exemplary kind of ecological

accounting. It reveals the relative impacts of the various stages of eco-

nomic activity, from resource extraction through manufacturing, dis-

tributing, retailing, consuming, and discarding. Further, it is a tool for

making ecologically sound choices. Since purchasing a product indi-

rectly supports all the steps in its life-cycle, it is important to know how

destructive these steps are.

Recent German legislation has taken life-cycle analysis from the theo-

retical to the practical. It requires auto manufacturers to take back each

car they make and completely recycle its component parts. This legisla-

tion creates a direct incentive for a new kind of design that reclaims as

much value as possible when a car is disassembled. It has spurred a move

toward using fewer different materials and more modular design than

before, so that a car can be more easily broken into useful elements when

it is recycled. The car’s “decay” and reintegration into the industrial sys-

tem become design considerations right from the start.

This attempt to design-in the recycling of the various materials mak-

ing up a product is termed design for disassembly. Such design intelli-

gently anticipates and facilitates recycling and reuse. It directly reduces

the need for virgin materials in the product’s manufacture. In addition,

remanufacturing recycled materials is much less energy intensive than

manufacturing from scratch—95 percent less in the case of aluminum.


The German government is also seriously considering a proposal

from the Hamburg-based Environmental Protection Encouragement

Agency (EPEA) to make manufacturers fully responsible for the life-

cycles of their products. The EPEA proposes that products be di-

vided into three categories: consumption products, service products,

and unmarketable products. Under this “Intelligent Products Sys-

tem,” consumption products must be fully biodegradable and can be

safely discarded after use. Service products—like television sets or au-

tomobiles—must be completely recycled by their manufacturers after

they have served their functions. Unmarketable products cannot be

safely used or disposed of. They must be chemically marked with the

manufacturer’s molecular signature and held for safekeeping in a

waste “parking lot.” In case of leaks or accidents, the offending chem-

icals will be traced back to their manufacturer, who will be severely

penalized.10

In the United States, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has

been promoting a deeper awareness of materials, energy, and toxicity is-

sues among architects. The following list of questions, adapted from

the AIA’s “Making A Difference: An Introduction to the Environmen-

tal Resource Guide,” provides an example of life-cycle thinking in an ar-

chitectural context:11

1. How much “embodied” energy does the building material cre-

ate over its entire life?

2. How much energy is required to manufacture the material and

related products?

3. How much energy is used in transporting the material from

source to project site?

4. Are renewable or sustainable energy sources used in the manu-

facture of the material?

5. Are there less energy consuming, longer-lived alternatives for the

same application?

6. Are local sources for the material available?


7. Can the material be recycled or reused at the end of its useful life

in a structure?

8. How easy or difficult is the material to recycle?

9. Do different construction systems offer better opportunities for

resource recovery at the end of building life?

10. How much maintenance does the material require over its life in

a structure?

11. How energy intensive is the maintenance regimen?

12. Are waste byproducts produced during maintenance?

13. Does the material require special coatings or treatments that

could present health or safety hazards?

14. If the material produces off-gasses during and after installation,

how is indoor air quality affected?

15. Are hazardous solid, aqueous, or gaseous wastes produced dur-

ing the manufacturing process environmentally significant?

16. How do the amounts of waste resulting from manufacture, fabri-

cation, and installation compare with those from alternative ma-

terials?

These questions help us examine a building in a new way. For exam-

ple, the second and third questions ask us to consider how much energy

is required to extract, process, manufacture, and transport a building

material. One recent study has provided quantitative estimates of this

embodied energy for various materials. Wood has the least embodied en-

ergy, at 639 kilowatt-hours per ton. Brick is next (4 times the amount

for wood), followed by concrete (5×), plastic (6×), glass (14×), steel

(24×), and aluminum (126×).12 The wide variation in embodied energy

for different materials confirms that this is an important design issue.

Ecological accounting can cause a painful shock of recognition: our

own choices as consumers or designers implicate us in environmental

impacts occurring, as often as not, a thousand miles away. In the words

of the cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”


Identifying impacts, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is a way of

improving our present practices. Clear ecological accounts help set the

context for ecological design.

Following the Flows

If we turn our ecological accounting to the resource flows—electricity,

water, food, and so on—necessary to maintain a building, campus, or

community, we grow more sensitive to the systems supporting our

lives. Last fall, Sim ran a design studio that focused on the four San

Francisco Bay Area hostels run by the American Youth Hostel Associa-

tion. One group of students attempted to follow the flows of the down-

town San Francisco hostel at Mason and O’Farrell Streets. They chose

six areas of interest: electricity, garbage, natural gas, recycling, sewage,

and water. For each area, they gave practical suggestions for hostelers,

provided basic facts on environmental impacts, and mapped the wider

resource flows that the hostel was participating in. They detailed their

results in a series of multilingual (English, French, German, Spanish,

and Japanese) presentation boards. It is worth summarizing the stu-

dents’ research here:

Electricity. The local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, de-

rives its electricity from a wide range of sources. These include imports

from other utilities in the western states and Canada (25 percent), eight

fossil-fuel plants just south of San Francisco (25 percent), a nuclear plant

near San Luis Obispo (17 percent), seventy hydroelectric plants in the

Sierra Nevada (8 percent), a geothermal plant about a hundred miles

north of San Francisco (8 percent), and other sources including wind

power from Altamont Pass and solar power from Death Valley (17 per-

cent). This represents an unusually diverse range of sources.

Garbage. San Francisco generates twelve hundred tons of trash per

day, which corresponds to eight pounds per person, almost twice the

national average. This garbage is collected and trucked to a transfer


station just south of the city. About one hundred large trucks carry the

garbage seventy miles east to the Altamont Landfill. This huge landfill

occupies 1,528 acres. There is a biogas recovery facility on-site that sup-

plies more than six thousand homes.

Natural Gas. Pacific Gas and Electric’s sources include California

gas fields (11 percent), Alberta gas fields (51 percent), and southwestern

gas fields (38 percent). The utility delivered about seven hundred billion

cubic feet of natural gas in 1990.

Recycling. Used glass is melted and processed into new products in

Oakland. Used plastic bottles are trucked to Chino in Southern Califor-

nia and remanufactured for a wide range of applications. Aluminum is

shipped to Texas for processing. Most of the used paper and cardboard

is sent to Pacific Rim countries and made into new paper and cardboard

products.

Sewage. Each day, the Oceanside Treatment Plant dumps 22 million

gallons of treated effluent four and a half miles out into the Pacific

Ocean. The North Point Treatment Plant and the Southeast Treatment

Plant dump 60 million gallons into San Francisco Bay. This works out

to about 111 gallons of sewage per person.

Water. Water begins as snowmelt in the High Sierra. It passes

through a complex system of regulating reservoirs and pipelines, is

treated, and is eventually stored in municipal reservoirs.

The educational value of following the flows is immense. It is a prac-

tical, ethically engaged way of understanding the ecological implica-

tions of design. A recent issue of New Directions for Higher Education,

“The Campus and Environmental Responsibility,” presents a series of

case studies in which students and faculty have traced resource flows at

various universities: UCLA, Tufts, Brown, the University of Kansas, the

University of Wisconsin–Madison, Hendrix College, and others. In the

issue, David W. Orr suggests the creation of a curriculum focusing on

this activity: “The study of institutional resource flows suggests a non-

traditional pedagogy that involves students in matters that are direct,


tangible, immediate, and consequential. In the food studies . . . stu-

dents participated in every step, all the way through the preparation of

the proposals that went to the respective college administrations. In the

process, students learned how their institutions worked; they learned

about agriculture, economics, ecology, and ethics; and they learned that

they were implicated in food service systems that were neither sustain-

able nor just.”13 Such a nontraditional curriculum would emphasize ac-

tive involvement in environmental decision making.

One of the earliest studies of campus ecology occurred at Arkansas’

Hendrix College in 1986. Four students, under the direction of Orr’s

Meadowcreek Project, spent a summer tracking down the sources of

the food served in the school’s cafeteria. Armed with notepads and a

video camera, the students traveled the country documenting their

food suppliers. They discovered that only 6 percent of the cafeteria’s

food came from Arkansas, a state with a strong agricultural base.

Vegetables and fruit traveled two thousand miles from California,

with a corresponding loss of nutritional value. Growers in California

“admitted to the students that their products were developed to survive

the long truck ride, and there was little concern for the nutritional qual-

ity.”14 Freezing, canning, and packing in chemical preservatives also did

little to enhance the quality of the produce. Furthermore, “while beef

cattle grazed within sight of campus, the meat served on campus came

from a large feedlot operation in Texas. Since cattle raised under the

stressful conditions of confinement in a feedlot do not have the same

flavor as range-fed beef, fat from Iowa was added to the meat to im-

prove the taste, and then the beef was shipped to the campus.”15 The

imperatives of the campus food-services industry had placed a premium

on meals that were simple to prepare, not on meals that were nutrition-

ally sound or bound to place.

In 1988–9, further funding was obtained to transform the buying

habits of the campus food service. Local farmers were encouraged to

grow food for the cafeteria, and the cooks were given additional training


and help in developing menus that would incorporate the new food

sources. The campus earned much goodwill in the local community be-

cause its purchases were a direct source of economic stimulation.

Arkansas sources now account for 30 percent of all food purchased, up

from 6 percent at the beginning of the study. Items prepared with local

ingredients are labeled with a small emblem that indicates the food’s

source. In this study, following the flows of the food system opened the

way to a less environmentally destructive system that supported local

farmers and provided students with more nutritious food.

A new generation of ecologically engaged artists is busy making re-

source flows a tangible part of our lives. Just as the Hendrix cafeteria

menu reminds students to consider the source of their food, the work

of New York City artist Mierle Ukeles reminds us of our relationship to

garbage. In 1977, Ukeles became the first artist-in-residence of the New

York City Department of Sanitation. An early performance was the

eleven-month-long Touch Sanitation, in which she shook the hands of

all the sanitation workers in the city. Ukeles believes that

the design of garbage should become the great public design of our age.

I am talking about the whole picture: recycling facilities, transfer stations,

trucks, landfills, receptacles, water treatment plants, rivers. They will be

the giant clocks and thermometers of our age that tell the time and the

health of the air, the earth and the water. They will be utterly ambi-

tious—our public cathedrals. For if we are to survive, they will be our

symbols of survival.16

Since 1983, Ukeles has been working on a complex piece called Flow

City, housed in the Marine Transfer Station at West Fifty-ninth Street

along the Hudson River. At the transfer station, trucks deliver garbage

to be barged across to Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. The “Pas-

sage Ramp” presents a vast panorama of recycled art to the intrepid vis-

itor. Along this ramp, “the materials of glass, metal, and plastic are sep-

arated, suspended, and composed in a spiraling format. . . . Ukeles’


space introduces the concept that waste is a false cultural construct;

every item is inherently valuable if only our traditional thinking about

garbage can be changed.”17 At the end of the 248-foot passage, the visi-

tor can walk out on the “Glass Bridge” to see trucks dumping their

contents onto waiting barges. Ukeles describes this space as “the violent

theater of dumping.” The “Glass Bridge” terminates in the “Media

Flow Wall,” an installation of twenty-four video monitors displaying

live and prerecorded images of the Hudson River, landfill operations

and restoration efforts at Fresh Kills, and everyday recycling efforts.

Flow City is a rich interpretation of New York City’s waste stream that

forces its visitors to rethink their relationship with garbage.

New applications of ecological accounting are also providing a way

of relating resource flows to the landscapes that sustain us. William

Rees, a professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at

the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, has attempted to cal-

culate the land area it would require to sustainably provide the 1.7 mil-

lion inhabitants of the Vancouver-Lower Fraser Valley Region with

food, forest products, and fossil fuel. Rees estimates that it would take

2.7 acres to provide each inhabitant with an average Canadian diet, 1.2acres with forest products, and 8.6 acres with renewable biomass pro-

duction sufficient to replace current fossil fuel use. Multiplying 12.5acres per capita by 1.7 million people, one finds that an area of 21 million

acres is required to provide basic resources for the region—an area

twenty-two times larger than the region itself.18

This kind of result challenges us to think more carefully about our

patterns of consumption and practices of design. Ecological accounting

encourages us to ask tough questions and seek detailed answers. De-

signs that minimize environmental impacts while meeting economic

constraints cannot be developed without clear and comprehensive tools

for assessing those impacts. Explicitly setting up accounts for energy,

water, materials, and other key variables provides critical guidance for

the ecological design process.


Notes

1. Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place (Lexington: Univ. Press ofKentucky, 1994), 99.

2. Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), xiv.

3. Hardin Tibbs, “Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for In-dustry,” Whole Earth Review, no. 77 (winter 1992): 15.

4. Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 39.5. World Resources Institute, World Resources 1990–91 (New York: Oxford

Univ. Press, 1992), 235.6. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988),

90.7. Andrea Cowles, Archipelago, no. 1 (spring 1992): 14–15.8. Peter Bahouth, Seeds of Change catalog (Santa Fe, N.Mex.: 1994), 61.9. This example is from Joel Makower, The E Factor: The Bottom-Line Ap-

proach to Environmentally Responsible Business (New York: Random House,1993), 44.

10. Michael Braungart and Justus Engelfried, “The Intelligent Products Sys-tem,” Bulletin of the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (1993).

11. Guidelines from the AIA presented in Architecture 80, no. 5 (May 1991):118.

12. John Tillman Lyle, Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 119.

13. David W. Orr, “The Problem of Education,” New Directions for HigherEducation, no. 77 (spring 1992): 6.

14. Gary L. Valen, “Hendrix College Local Food Project,” New Directionsfor Higher Education, no. 77 (spring 1992): 79.

15. Ibid.16. Quotation of Mierle Ukeles is from Barbara Matilsky, Fragile Ecologies:

Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations and Solutions (New York: Rizzoli, 1992),78.

17. Ibid., 76.18. William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, “Ecological Footprints and

Appropriated Carrying Capacity: Measuring the Natural Capital Requirementsof the Human Economy,” in Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Eco-nomics Approach to Sustainability, ed. AnnMari Jansson et al. (Washington,D.C.: Island Press, 1994), 370–1.


THIRD PRINCIPLE

Design with Nature

125

By working with living processes, we respect the needs of all species

while meeting our own. Engaging in processes that regenerate rather

than deplete, we become more alive.

A Parternership with Nature

Evolution generates many levels of wholeness simultaneously, from the

metabolic dance of a cell to the vast cycles maintaining the biosphere.

These nested levels of integrity are sustained by their own characteristic

patterns of health. By designing with nature, by working with these pat-

terns of health, we may aspire to designs that are compatible with the

living world.

Each level of integrity manifests a working logic of its own. The cell

lives in relation to its neighbors, exchanging signals and nutrients. A

community of organisms is woven together by cooperation and compe-

tition, by food webs and habitat. The biosphere itself pulses with the in-

terconnection of all life. Each level—cell, organism, ecosystem, biore-

gion, biosphere—presents a series of critical design opportunities and

constraints.

Designing with nature is a strategy for successively reducing harmful

impacts by attending to the preconditions of health for each level. This

philosophy of design represents more than a shift in language and epis-

temology: it is a shift in the way things are made and landscapes are

used. Designing with nature acknowledges that in the long run, the

most ecologically benign solutions make the most active use of life’s

own patterns of health.

These patterns, honed by life and time, cannot be easily enumerated.

There is no end to the work of discerning them or to the work of trans-

lating them into designs that are both effective and culturally appro-

priate. They are as inexhaustible as nature’s own generative capacities.


Designing with nature suggests an ongoing partnership with nature,

one that benefits both people and ecosystems.

We are in nature, and nature is in us. We face an interesting ambigu-

ity of “multiple perspectives, of design as pattern, of ourselves as na-

ture’s designer and nature’s designs.”1 This suggests that ecological de-

sign is a result of our constructive engagement with nature. It reflects

nature’s underlying integrities, finding within them a new context for

design.

Ecological design is predicated on the coevolution of nature and cul-

ture. It is a kind of covenant between human communities and other

living communities: Nothing in the design should violate the wider in-

tegrities of nature.2 We are currently breaking this covenant at every

level. We are re-engineering the genetic instructions of a single cell,

killing off entire species, even disturbing the climate.

The case of toxic substances is instructive. While these substances are

common in nature, they are highly specific, produced in small quanti-

ties as needed, and completely biodegradable. Rattlesnake venom is

produced at the point of application, inside the snake. It is not pro-

duced centrally and shipped cross-country in venom trucks and railcars,

with spills threatening entire ecosystems.3 By choosing to work with

toxic substances unfamiliar and destructive to the living world, we are

breaking our covenant with nature.

In his seminal book Design with Nature, Ian McHarg wrote that

“our eyes do not divide us from the world, but unite us with it. Let this

be known to be true. Let us then abandon the simplicity of separation

and give unity its due. Let us abandon the self-mutilation which has

been our way and give expression to the potential harmony of man-

nature.”4 This harmony clearly must respect each level of evolutionary

design integrity. For instance, in our dealings with an ecosystem, we

ought to match flows of materials to its assimilative capacities, preserve

critical habitat, and in every possible way respect the patterns responsi-

ble for its continuing vitality.

While this harmony clearly has the negative value of a constraint—

“Do not transgress this limit,” “Do not harm this piece of land”—it is

also an endlessly fertile source of solutions. The designs that most

deeply reflect this harmony are themselves an active part of it, not just

mimicking nature in an abstract sense, but participating in a living

dance in a health-giving way. Nature is not a model for designs that are

then kept rigidly apart in a purely cultural realm. Nature is a matrix

within which designs find an identity and a coherence that contribute to

the health of the whole. Ecological designs are articulated within an

ecosystem or bioregion in the way veins are articulated within a leaf.

They fill out an existing structure in a way that enhances the life, the

flows, the processes within it.

This chapter explores some of the implications of designing with na-

ture. It is intended to provide a flicker of illumination, a brief explo-

ration of some favorite examples. The discussion is suggestive rather

than exhaustive, for the design possibilities opened up by a collaboration

with nature are as unlimited as those employed by the living world itself.

Waste Equals Food

Walk through one of California’s temperate rainforests and you will see

fallen redwoods that have been feeding fungi and sheltering animals for

a thousand years. Out of decay new trees spring forth. The forest com-

munity maintains its health century after century because every process

of growth is linked to a process of decay.

It is no small thing for the complementary activities of millions of

species to cycle elements from simple to complex forms and back again.

The manifold compounds necessary for the redwood’s survival are fa-

miliar foods for the microbes, fungi, insects, and plants that are nour-

ished by its life and eventual decay. This cyclic and interdependent

economy is intrinsically diverse and sustainable. It is predicated on fru-

gality and regeneration.

127Design with Nature

In Farming: A Hand Book, Wendell Berry speaks of the farmer in

this way:

The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.5

Sunlight is gathered by the grains, providing food for the cow, whose

dung fertilizes the soil. In turn, the soil nurtures next year’s corn. Each

of nature’s diverse ecosystems—from forest to farm to wetland—partic-

ipates in restorative materials cycles that maintain the availability of all

substances critical to life.

In contrast, our own economic processes are linear. We are trans-

forming vast quantities of raw materials into dangerous pollutants. We

are degrading materials, making them less and less available for future

use. Stocks of fossil fuels and ores are being burned and dissipated. We

are deeply altering the nutrient cycles that sustain all life. All this be-

cause we have not designed products and processes whose wastes can

be reintegrated into the economy.

In nature, waste equals food. Plants transform water, carbon dioxide,

and sunlight into sugars, and these sugars are broken back down by

other species. Carbon atoms are reincarnated, now bound on the sur-

face of a giraffe’s skin, soon rolling across the fields as tumbleweed.

Over a period of four billion years, there have always been niches for or-

ganisms that could make use of underutilized chemical pathways. As

these niches have filled, an extraordinarily efficient system of nutrient

cycling has developed. While nutrients may be trapped for a time on the

ocean floor or under layers of rocks, in geological time they are re-

leased. On average, there is virtually no net depletion of any nutrient.

If a community of organisms living in close association cannot jointly

process their own wastes and cycle their nutrients, the association will


not survive for long. Without continual cleansing and recycling, toxins

rapidly accumulate and food disappears, eventually killing the commu-

nity. In the same way, if a web of businesses working in close association

cannot jointly utilize their waste streams and cycle their materials, the

web will collapse. It will run out of resources and asphyxiate itself in a

landscape of slag heaps and toxic dumps.

If businesses were able to turn waste into food, they could sharply re-

duce both pollution and the need for raw materials. Together they

could form an industrial ecology that is fully integrated within wider

natural cycles of materials. This industrial ecology would close the loops

left open in conventional industrial processes. It would virtually elimi-

nate irreversible flows of virgin materials into pollutants, transforming

them into flows complementary to nature’s own.

Closing the loops in industrial processes accomplishes two critical

tasks. First, it turns waste into a resource, displacing the need for raw

materials. Second, it avoids turning waste into pollution. Industrial

ecology ensures that our choices of materials, processes, emissions, and

ways of reclaiming waste are compatible with the integrity of ecosys-

tems, wastersheds, and the biosphere itself. Waste, by design, equals

food. It either cycles back into industrial ecosystems or enters natural

ecosystems in nontoxic forms at levels that can be properly assimilated.

One of the earliest formulations of industrial ecology was described

in a 1989 Scientific American article written by two General Motors ex-

ecutives. They argued that “the traditional model of industrial activ-

ity—in which individual manufacturing processes take in raw materials

and generate products to be sold plus waste to be disposed of—should

be transformed into a more integrated model: an industrial ecosystem.

In such a system the consumption of energy and materials is optimized,

waste generation is minimized and the effluents of one process—

whether they are spent catalysts from petroleum refining, fly and bot-

tom ash from electric-power generation or discarded plastic containers

from consumer products—serve as the raw material for another


process.”6 Industrial ecosystems mimic the restorative materials cycles

of natural ecosystems. They optimize the recycling and reuse of each

material separately, but they also allow for the creation of more complex

“food webs” of materials. Most important, they do not overwhelm

their surrounding natural ecosystems with either the scale or toxicity of

their pollutants.

Back in the Proterozoic era, about two billion years ago, the Earth

witnessed a massive pollution crisis. Running out of easily available hy-

drogen sulfide fuel, early photosynthesizing cyanobacteria developed a

more abundant substitute: water. They released oxygen liberated from

water in copious quantities. Atmospheric oxygen quickly rose from one

part in a million to one part in five, from a trace contaminant to a major

component.

Oxygen, being an extremely volatile gas, posed difficulties for early

life. Anaerobes literally decomposed on exposure to oxygen; they were

driven underwater and underground. Yet, in a surprising reversal, they

eventually developed respiration—the ability to use the very oxygen

that had threatened them. Waste oxygen now fueled respiration. Oxy-

gen levels were maintained at a constant level, and the oxygen crisis was

averted.7

Our present pollution crisis also results from a failure in design. We

are missing a whole metabolic level that could bring industrial processes

back in balance with the living world. In a sense, we are waiting to dis-

cover the industrial analog of respiration!

All organisms turn energy and food into living matter while produc-

ing waste materials of various kinds. This waste matter becomes food

for legions of saprophytes, literally “decay eaters.” These decomposers,

which outnumber species of all other kinds, include beetles, fungi, ne-

matodes, and bacteria. Through their complementary metabolic path-

ways they return both essential nutrients and trace minerals to active

circulation. Their role is a very important one, for without them, nutri-

ents would rapidly dissipate. In many terrestrial communities, 90 per-


cent or more of photosynthetic production passes directly to the de-

composers.

While conventional industrial systems almost completely neglect

them, the decomposers necessarily play an important role in industrial

ecology. We need to design industrial ecosystems with processes of de-

cay and breakdown explicitly in mind. As industrial consultant Hardin

Tibbs observes, “Perhaps the key to creating industrial ecosystems is to

reconceptualize wastes as products. This suggests not only the search

for ways to reuse waste, but also the active selection of processes with

readily reusable waste.”8 By failing to think clearly about processes of

decay, whether of metal, plastic, food, or whatnot, we miss an opportu-

nity to design with regeneration in mind.

A few years ago, a film studio in Wuxi, China, faced a difficult pollu-

tion problem: It was producing large quantities of silver-contaminated

wastewater. The relatively low silver concentrations, under one part per

million, prohibited the use of conventional chemical treatment and re-

covery. On the other hand, these concentrations were dangerously high

for many aquatic organisms.

This waste lacked a complementary process of regeneration. It was a

potential resource going unused. In response, the studio decided to

create a series of living filters. Wastewater now meanders through ponds

planted with water hyacinths (Eichlornia crassipes) and some other

species of aquatic plants, spending about two or three days in treat-

ment. The root system of the water hyacinth is an exceptionally fine sil-

ver filter. It can concentrate—“mine”—silver up to thirty-five thousand

times its level in the wastewater.

When the roots are burned, the silver remains trapped in the ash.

This ash can contain up to 4 percent silver, which represents a high

grade of ore. The silver is extracted from the ash with standard meth-

ods, resulting in an overall retrieval rate of 95 to 99 percent. With a con-

ventional treatment system, the silver would remain at unacceptably

high levels in the effluent. Furthermore, the studio would be forced to


purchase substantially more silver from external sources, causing fur-

ther environmental destruction. Instead, this ecological wastewater

treatment system produces clean water and allows silver to be recycled

in an effective way. The water hyacinths ingeniously turn waste into

“food.”9

The conventional cleanup of toxic-waste sites is extremely expensive

and often creates as much of a health hazard as it prevents. Polluted wa-

ter, sludge, or soil is typically dredged and burned off-site. In the incin-

eration process, many toxic substances are released. The alternative is to

treat the wastes on-site with organisms chosen from an array of living

filters, including bacteria, algae, fungi, and plants. This technique,

called bioremediation, relies on the ability of organisms to break down,

render less toxic, or sequester substances ranging from pesticides to

heavy metals. Bioremediation is typically cheaper than conventional

treatment and has the additional advantage of actually reclaiming sites

rather than destroying them in the “cleanup” process.

Mel Chin, an artist with a longstanding concern for ecological issues,

has been working with plants that can grow in heavily contaminated

soil. Such plants are sometimes found near ancient European mine sites,

where they have adapted over the centuries to high levels of toxicity.

Remarkably, they can draw heavy metals up through their root systems.

These plants, known as hyperaccumulators, can increase concentrations

of metals like lead, zinc, and cadmium thousands of times, gradually

detoxifying soils in the process. Chin was so intrigued with the purify-

ing potential of the hyperaccumulators that he created a demonstration

landfill cleanup project to highlight their abilities. He negotiated with

various public agencies, finally obtaining permission to plant a sixty-

foot plot by agreeing to undergo forty hours of hazardous materials in-

cident response training.

The Pig’s Eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minnesota, a state Superfund pri-

ority, is highly contaminated by cadmium and other heavy metals,

mainly from old batteries. Chin and colleagues fenced a plot in the


landfill and planted a hybrid variety of sweet corn (Zea mays), bladder

campion (Silene cucabalis), and four other species. This was one of the

first field tests of the hyperaccumulators, and it was a dramatic success.

After a single growing season, the plants were cut and dried like hay,

and then burned. The ash, like that of the water hyacinths at the Wuxi

film studio, contained such large concentrations of heavy metals that it

was of ore grade.

Chin’s piece, appropriately named Revival Field, transcends merely

symbolic concerns by actively engaging the health of ecosystems. Chin

describes his piece this way: “The work, in its most complete incarna-

tion (after the fences are removed and the toxic-laden weeds har-

vested), will offer minimal visual and formal effects. For a time, an in-

tended invisible aesthetic will exist that can be measured scientifically by

the quality of a revitalized earth. Eventually that aesthetic will be re-

vealed in the return of growth to the soil.”10 Ironically, a National En-

dowment for the Arts grant for Revival Field was almost rescinded on

the grounds that it was not “art”!

Chin is now working with an international team of artists and scien-

tists to make the cleanup operation pay for itself. In effect, toxic sites

will be “mined” for heavy metals by planting successive crops of hyper-

accumulators. Each crop will be burned, and the metal recovered from

the ash will be sold to finance the cleanup. In this case, the design solu-

tion relies on the inherent ability of certain plants to remove large quan-

tities of heavy metals from the soil. With the right kinds of plants, a

toxic site can gradually be restored to health.

Other applications of living filters are equally exciting. Recent NASA

studies indicate that certain plants can effectively reduce indoor pollu-

tion levels by absorbing polluting gases into their leaves. Spider plants

can remove carbon monoxide, aloe veras can remove formaldehyde,

and chrysanthemums can remove benzene.11 Water trickling over a moss

surface creates an effective two-stage filtering system. The water ab-

sorbs and accumulates pollutants in the air, and the mosses, with their


unusually large surface area, purify the water as it trickles past. The sys-

tem also provides impressive levels of evaporative cooling.12 Bacteria are

being used to eat up oil spills, peat moss is refreshing stale office air, and

fungi are cleaning contaminated soils.

Our own bloodstreams constantly exchange oxygen-rich red blood

and waste-laden blue blood. There is much to learn by observing the

transition from blue blood to red blood, from waste to nutrients. Waste

is eliminated from one process in order to maintain its own integrity. It

is then incorporated as a source of nutrients by a second process.

The flow of materials throughout a system is our source of inspira-

tion as ecological designers. Since nutrients—useful materials—are

valuable and wastes are costly, there is a huge incentive to figure out

what process your waste is food for. “Waste” must always be under-

stood as material of no value only to the process at hand, and not as ma-

terial of no conceivable value to any process at any time.

A very literal application of the notion that waste equals food is pro-

vided by the waste and materials exchanges presently operating in sev-

eral states. In the California Waste Exchange’s Directory of Industrial

Recyclers and Listing of Hazardous Wastes Available for Recycling, for

example, are listings for both industrial recyclers and available haz-

ardous wastes. Hazardous wastes are listed in the following categories:

acids, alkalis, antifreeze, catalysts, caustics, coolants, dry-cleaning

wastes, inorganics, metallic salts and sludges, metals (many categories),

oils, oil filters, organics, solvents, transformers, waxes, and wood and

paper. A typical recycling entry might include “waste acids, including

chromic, hydrochloric, nitric, phosphoric, and sulfuric,“ and available

wastes might include “phosphoric acid solution containing 5–10% phos-

phoric acid and 95% water generated from iron phosphate coating of

computer panels.”13 Waste exchanges point toward an inevitable trend:

matching wastes generated to available recycling processes. Instead of

paying high fees for disposal, producers can sell wastes or pass them

over to recyclers.


Unutilized wastes are actually a symptom of poor design. They can

cause two kinds of pollution: toxic pollution and scale pollution. Toxic

pollution includes traditional hazardous wastes with corresponding

health risks to human communities and ecosystems. Scale pollution in-

cludes wastes—like carbon dioxide or CFCs—that are destructive only

in their aggregate effects and not in small quantities. Scale pollution

presents a severe design challenge. Indeed, writes Hardin Tibbs, “the

scale of industrial pollution is now so great that even normally nontoxic

emissions, like carbon dioxide, have become a serious threat to the

global ecosystem. Seen in its broadest terms, the problem for our indus-

trial system is that it is steadily growing larger in comparison with the

natural environment, so that its outputs are reaching levels that are

damaging because of their sheer volume, regardless of whether they are

traditional pollutants or not.”14

The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (Max’s Pot) is

currently testing new building materials and other products utilizing

wastes. For example, when coal is burned, it produces large quantities

of fly ash and sulfur dioxide. The fly ash can be used as an additive in

concrete; the sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain when released into

the atmosphere, is already precipitated out so that coal utilities can

meet emissions standards. The sulfur dioxide can easily be extracted

from the precipitator stack, thereby providing a useful industrial feed-

stock chemical as well as another potential concrete additive. Sulfur can

even be used as a natural pesticide to retard home insect infestation.

Max’s Pot is experimenting with other innovative materials, including

waste straw for straw-bale houses and woodchips as a cement stabilizer.

We are just beginning to create full-fledged industrial ecosystems in

which wastes from many different processes become food for others,

and in which energy use and materials use are jointly optimized. The

most fully realized example to date is in Kalundborg, Denmark (figure

16).15 The project encompasses an electric-power plant (Asnaes), an

oil refinery, a pharmaceutical plant, a wallboard factory, a sulfuric acid


producer, cement manufacturers, local agriculture and aquaculture, and

nearby houses. In the early 1980s, Asnaes started supplying excess steam

to the refinery and the pharmaceutical plant. It also began supplying

waste heat for a district heating system, allowing thirty-five hundred

household oil furnaces to be shut off. In 1991, the refinery began re-

moving sulfur from its gas, selling it to a sulfuric acid producer located

in nearby Jutland. The wallboard factory was already buying surplus gas

from the refinery, and the refinery’s sulfur-reduction initiative made it

possible for Asnaes to buy the remaining low-impurity gas.

Asnaes is now selling its fly ash to the cement manufacturer and will

soon sell waste gypsum to the wallboard plant. Its waste heat is also sent

to its own greenhouses and fish farm, which produces two hundred


FIGURE 16. Flows of materials and energy in the Kalundborg industrial ecosystem

tons of trout and turbot a year. Other loops are closing fast: The refin-

ery provides wastewater to Asnaes, and the pharmaceutical plant is

turning its sludge into fertilizer for local farms. In Kalundborg, the de-

liberate reintegration of waste has greatly decreased environmental

impacts.

Each of these examples of industrial cooperation was cost-effective

and occurred spontaneously. In the case of Kalundborg, the benefits of

coordinated activities are clear: Wastes become profitable intermediate

products, and producers close enough to directly utilize the wastes can

obtain a cheap source of supply. The possibilities for planned industrial

ecosystems are even greater. If the metabolisms of several producers

were linked right from the design stage, it would be possible to mini-

mize overall levels of materials, energy, and pollution. Each member of

such a consortium would have lower costs because of the synergies in-

herent in the design.

The strategy of turning waste into food is an essential one if we are to

fully integrate human activities within nature’s own cycles. We have no

choice but to replicate nature’s own sunlight-driven regenerative cy-

cling of materials. The extent to which we fail to close our own materi-

als cycles is the extent to which we endanger nature’s own. By convert-

ing linear, pollution-producing processes into interconnected cycles, we

can vastly reduce the impact of everything we make and build.

Active Landscapes

Joseph Needham, the great historian of Chinese science and civiliza-

tion, tells an interesting story about the ancient debate between Confu-

cian and Taoist water engineers. The Confucians favored strict control

of water flow, a tradition clearly taken up by the Army Corps of Engi-

neers in our own century. The Taoists believed that water should mean-

der over the landscape, following its inherent tendencies. Reflecting on

that belief, the Taoist engineer Chia Jiang wrote three thousand years


ago, “Those who are good at controlling water give it the best opportu-

nities to flow away.”16

Then, as now, there was a struggle between the desire to make more

land available for homes and agriculture and the desire to respect the in-

tegrity of existing hydrological cycles. In the compromises inevitable in

practice, the narrow channels of the Confucians were often buttressed

with retention basins for occasional floods. On the other hand, the very

wide dikes of the Taoists were augmented with additional channels to

allow farming during nonflood conditions.

The Taoist engineers were content to observe flows of water over the

landscape and design accordingly. They saw the land as an active land-

scape providing ecological functions that simultaneously meet the needs

of both people and wider living communities. They valued the intrinsic

integrity of the landscape and found both meaning and sustenance by

participating in its processes. In contrast, the Confucian engineers saw

the need to discipline water, placing it in a position subordinate to the

needs of civilization. They were also willing to expend vast amounts of

labor and materials to reach this end.

We have responded to our own landscapes much as did the Confu-

cian engineers. We have built vast water projects, destroyed wetlands,

imposed systems of agriculture alien to the capacities of the land, and

mined entire regions beyond recognition. We have not valued land-

scapes for their own sake, encouraging their own processes, instead

seeking narrowly productive landscapes that are stripped of their wider

ecological significance.

Ecological methods of flood control are currently experiencing a re-

vival of interest. These methods rely on a healthy landscape in which

vegetation moderates flow, erosion is minimized, and water is allowed

to follow its own course. The goal is to restore ecosystems so that they

can play their long-lost role of controlling flooding. By their design,

these natural systems offer additional amenities like recreational areas,


trails, and wildlife habitat. Furthermore, they are less prone to cata-

strophic failures like the great Mississippi floods of 1993.17

Ecological flood-control systems are a return to the idea of active

landscapes. Thirty years ago, the ecologist Howard T. Odum did pio-

neering research on the energetic contribution made by natural systems

in such processes as water purification. These contributions, though left

unvalued in our usual accounting, often have a very high monetary

equivalent. When they are added to well-recognized values like recre-

ation or habitat, they provide a strong case for preserving the ecological

integrity of the land.

The range and quality of these free services are astonishing. A recent

study documents about two dozen functions supported by wetland sys-

tems alone.18 Wetlands preserve genetic and community diversity and

provide food and habitat for migrating birds and other creatures. Wet-

lands are nurseries for a wide range of aquatic organisms. They also at-

tenuate floods, purify water, build soil from sediments, regulate

groundwater recharge and discharge, and provide local and global cli-

mate stabilization. If these services could somehow be assigned mone-

tary values, they would add up to a substantial figure. Ironically, wet-

lands are typically seen as having marginal value and are therefore

convenient targets for development. As recent studies indicate, with a

fuller ecological accounting, the true value of wetlands may be at least

ten times their appraised value.

The ability of vegetation to moderate local climate is well estab-

lished. A single tree can “provide the same cooling effect as ten room-

size air-conditioners working twenty hours per day.”19 In Tucson,

Arizona, the Urban Releaf program aims to plant half a million desert-

adapted trees over an eight-year period. Initial studies indicate that

electricity savings from reduced demand for air conditioning will be

more than five million dollars per year. A carefully maintained active

landscape can also influence patterns of air flow, moderating pollution.


Michael Hough reports in a recent article that the German city of

Stuttgart “has retained the hills that surround the city for parkland and

agriculture, because it has found that green hillsides greatly reduce air

inversions and pollution problems by maintaining the free flow of kata-

batic winds that ventilate the city.”20

Even a humble stormwater retention basin, designed to control ur-

ban runoff, can serve many other roles. At the West Davis Ponds in

Davis, California, a flat, lifeless retention pond has been transformed

into a rich source of habitat and recreation. Islands and pools shaped

from the earth and planted with native vegetation are now attracting

Canada geese, avocets, egrets, muskrats, and many other species. What

is more, says landscape architect Robert L. Thayer, Jr., “by weaving the

ecological structure and function of the [watershed] back into our

neighborhoods, we are able not only to reinforce the community of hu-

mans, but also to rebuild the wider and truer community of all living

creatures.”21 The basin has become a visible part of an active landscape.

The Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary is a 154-acre wetlands park

nestled between the Northern California town of Arcata and Hum-

boldt Bay. With 220 recorded species, it offers the best bird watching

around. On a busy day, the ponds are ringed with telescopes on tripods.

It has become a favorite lunch spot for office workers and has attracted

thousands of new tourists to the town of fifteen thousand.22

Walking around the flourishing marsh, one is surprised to discover

that it is actually purifying the wastewater from the entire town. The

marsh, constructed on derelict land, has been treating sewage from the

town’s conventional primary treatment plant since 1986. As the water

meanders through the marsh over a two-month period, it is purified by

plants like duckweed, cattails, pennywort, and bulrushes; aerobic and

anaerobic bacteria; mollusks; and fish. When the water is finally

pumped from the marsh out to Humboldt Bay, it is generally of higher

quality than the bay water itself.

The marsh has become a source of great civic pride. The town “inau-


gurated its new sewage system by holding a ‘Flush with Pride’ festival.

Citizens wore T-shirts emblazoned with the festival’s logo, a salmon

leaping out of a toilet as a great blue heron perched on the seat.”23 The

Arcata marsh carefully matches a human waste with an ecosystem for

which the waste becomes a resource. The marsh has been designed as

an active landscape that partially substitutes ecological intelligence for

energy, materials, and dollars.

The Arcata marsh relies on the inherent purification abilities of

healthy wetlands. In a similar way, we can create agricultural landscapes

that mimic the structure and function of wild ecosystems. At the Land

Institute in Salina, Kansas, Wes Jackson and his colleagues have been

searching for a sustainable form of prairie agriculture in the image of a

wild prairie. In this vision, agroecosystems, or agricultural ecosystems,

“should mimic the vegetation structure of natural plant communities.

This means developing agroecosystems that incorporate crops as struc-

tural mimics, and thereby functional analogs, of wild species. Cropping

systems then would resemble, and behave like, natural communities.”24


FIGURE 17. Conventional wastewater treatment pond juxtaposed with con-structed wetland

If the structural mimics can successfully re-create their roles in wild

ecosystems, then these agricultural ecosystems should inherit many of

the ecological functions that lend stability to their wild counterparts.

The very pressures that caused prairie vegetation to evolve—an ex-

treme climate ranging from –40 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, fire, and

large grazers—have lent it long-term resiliency. The prairie’s diverse

plant species seek water and nutrients at different soil depths. Their very

diversity prevents the spread of diseases and pests. Copious legumes

continually add nitrogen to the soil. Nutrients are tightly cycled by the

rich soil. The vegetation is adapted to highly erratic precipitation pat-

terns. The perennial groundcover prevents erosion and traps moisture.

Furthermore, the whole system is well adapted to fire because the seeds

of many prairie species require fire for germination. None of these fea-

tures is maintained in conventional prairie agriculture, with its vast

monocultures and dependence on fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides.

An agricultural mimic of the prairie can maintain many of the valu-

able functions of wild ecosystems while providing respectable crops of

food, oils, and animal feed. As a form of agriculture uniquely suited to

the land and climate, it works with the underlying ecological processes

of the landscape. It replaces expensive and destructive external inputs

with locally adapted intelligence.

An active landscape is neither completely “wild” nor excessively con-

trolled in the manner of conventional water projects and agricultural

systems. Like a good garden, it is a kind of conversation with nature.

Ecological flood control, the Arcata marsh, and prairie-mimic agricul-

ture hint at a landscape that “merges seamlessly with nature, yet is per-

forming valuable services.”25 Such a landscape would draw us back into

the circle of beings, meeting the needs of all species.

Self-Design

Next to Stuart’s desk is a tiny aquarium. This ecological microcosm, an

old jar he filled with pond water a few weeks before, is full of surprises.


A water hyacinth and a flourishing mat of duckweed and Azolla float on

the surface. Underneath, the root hairs of the hyacinth constantly strain

the water for nutrients, providing a home for various microorganisms.

Decaying organic matter accumulates on the bottom, forming a kind of

park for the playful water fleas and detritivores. Elsewhere, copepods

swim in their characteristic herky-jerky fashion, tiny amphipods roil

about, and snails slowly sweep the sides of the jar. Hundreds of species

interact in this microcosm, their natural histories crisscrossing in a tiny

world structured by roots, detritus, air, and water.

Other jars support very different ecosystems. In one jar, a green fili-

gree of Azolla roots reaches all the way to the bottom. In another, flat-

worms graze the sides while hydras hold out their tentacles, seeking

prey. In a third, a water hyacinth larger than the jar itself is bursting

forth, transpiring water at four times the rate of any other system.

These modest microcosms are all seeded with the same pond water

and plants, but they differ somewhat in their geometries and solar ori-

entation. Over time, each microcosm transforms itself, producing a

characteristic collection of species that makes effective use of the avail-

able sunlight and nutrients. The microcosms seem to grow more well

adapted and interconnected.

There is a kind of self-design or self-organization at work here. Each

microcosm spontaneously develops new levels of coherence and re-

silience that arise only from the rich interactions of the whole system.

The flexibility of its component species allows it to respond to changing

circumstances.

A simple experiment vividly illustrates the ability of systems to be-

have in ways far more complex than their individual parts. Begin by

trapping a thin layer of water between two large plates, keeping the top

and bottom plates at the same temperature. The water, as expected, re-

mains completely homogenous. Start to slowly heat the bottom layer,

producing a temperature difference between the plates. The water re-

sponds with a steady pattern of heat conduction from bottom to top

(figure 18, left). When the temperature difference reaches a certain crit-


ical level, something remarkable happens. The water suddenly begins

moving coherently, producing a series of convection cells or rolls (fig-

ure 18, right). The original conduction pattern becomes unstable. The

system self-designs, enabling it to transport heat more effectively. The

self-designing process operates without an overall plan: Local responses

within the network of moving water molecules suddenly mesh to-

gether, producing coherent large-scale movements. A homogeneous

pattern is replaced with a richly structured one.26

Another example is provided by the bizarre life-cycle of slime molds.

They begin as free-living amoebas, absorbing nutrients in their vicinity.

Over time, some of the cells grow hungry and emit a compound known

as cAMP. Nearby cells follow the cAMP gradient toward the emitter,

forming slow-moving waves. They gradually aggregate into a column

of cells that begins to resemble a fungus. The cells at the top then trans-

form themselves into a sporing appendage. The individual spores scat-

ter in the wind, providing the starting cells for a new colony, and the

whole cycle begins again. In a strange way, the slime molds are simulta-

neously a collection of free-living cells and multicellular cooperative en-

tities. When triggered by a food shortage, the individual cells form co-

herent structures in a manner reminiscent of the convection cells.27


FIGURE 18. Demonstration of self-design in heating of water. Left: A steady pat-tern of heat conduction develops as heating proceeds. Right: Formation of Bénardconvection cells at critical temperature differential.

In our design practices, we have dealt very effectively with the en-

tropic side of thermodynamics. We have designed engines and ma-

chines of every description and worked out their theoretical perform-

ance limits. But at the same time, we have largely neglected the

negentropic side, in which systems maintain themselves far from equilib-

rium by using whatever flows of energy and materials are available.

Once created, “the self-organized structure stays ‘alive’ by drawing

nourishment from the surrounding flux and disorder. This is what hap-

pens when tornadoes and other cyclonic winds form out of turbulence.

To keep themselves going, they feed off the thunderstorms, moisture,

steep temperature and pressure gradients, and turbulence that gave

them birth.”28 Jupiter’s red spot is believed to function in this way. In-

deed, all organisms flourish in a nonequilibrium state, feeding off freely

available sunlight.

Self-designing systems like these present a rich possibility. If they are

seeded with sufficient diversity, they can design their own solutions to

the problems they are presented with. At first, this seems rather discon-

certing. We are used to working out all the details. In highly complex sit-

uations, however, our limited knowledge may render such a level of con-

trol impossible. Letting go, trusting the capacities of a self-designing

system, may be a better way of working constructively with complexity

than attempting to oversimplify it.

Imagine a completely new kind of design partnership in which we

catalyze the abilities of the right kind of system to self-design a solution.

Just as the spaghetti-sauce-jar aquaria reconfigure themselves in re-

sponse to their particular conditions, we may envision ecosystems that

self-design to purify wastewater, provide food, or heal damaged land-

scapes. Such self-designing ecosystems have already found application

in the new field of ecological engineering. Conventional engineering,

notes Howard T. Odum, “replaces nature with new structure and

process, but ecological engineering provides designs that use environ-

mental structures and processes.”29 In other words, nature works for


free. Using the self-designing tendencies of systems is always energeti-

cally cheaper than opposing them.

This approach asks us to acknowledge the inherent creativity of self-

designing systems. It is this “capability of ecosystems that ecological en-

gineering recognizes as a significant feature, because it allows nature to

do some of the ‘engineering.‘ We participate as the choice generator

and as a facilitator of matching environments with ecosystems, but na-

ture does the rest.”30 Self-designing systems respond well to a wide

range of disturbances because they can strengthen whatever pathways

are most valuable in a given situation, flexibly rearranging themselves to

maintain their overall integrity.

The Ocean Arks International ecological wastewater treatment facil-

ity in Providence, Rhode Island, demonstrates the power and beauty of

self-designing systems. It is located in a sleek greenhouse structure that

stands in marked contrast to the grimy conventional treatment plant a

hundred yards away. While the conventional plant relies on mechanical

filtering, bacteria, and chemicals, the ecological system relies on the in-

herent capacity of aquatic ecosystems to purify water.

The greenhouse is filled to the brim with four rows of large, translu-

cent cylinders that are overflowing with aquatic plants. Each row of

cylinders is connected in a long series. It takes about four days for the

water to flow from the first tank to the last tank. The earliest tanks con-

tain the simple inhabitants of any nutrient-rich pond, including bacte-

ria, algae, snails, and amphipods. Later tanks contain more delicate

creatures: higher plants, clams, mollusks, and fish. Up top there is an in-

flow pipe labeled “SEWAGE,” providing a gentle reminder that this de-

lightful greenhouse is actually treating secondary effluent from Field’s

Point. Another sign, tongue-in-cheek, warns, “NO FISHING.”

In effect, the greenhouse facility replicates the purification of water

that occurs as it travels through a wetland. It contains a series of micro-

cosms—tiny artificial ecosystems—that can support all the species nec-

essary to take nutrients, pathogens, and toxins out of the water. As de-


signer John Todd describes the process, “Microscopic bacteria con-

sume the nutrient-laden organic matter from the wastewater and con-

vert toxic ammonia to nitrite and nitrate, which creates suitable food

for plants like duckweed. Algae growing on the sides of the tank con-

sume abundant nutrients and grow rapidly. Snails and zooplankton feed

on the algae. The zooplankton are then eaten by fish, such as striped

bass, tilapia and minnows, etc.—and on and on churns the natural food

chain cycle of an ecologically engineered system, purifying the waste-

water with each step.”31

In another part of the building are simulated tidal marshes, where

the effluent passes through two distinct cycles: one without oxygen

during high tide and one with oxygen during low tide. The marshes,

which are planted with bulrushes, cattails, and other species, are an im-

portant source of metabolic diversity. As species diversity increases, so

does the range of compounds that can be absorbed or neutralized.

This ecological wastewater treatment process is both beautiful and

effective. The greenhouse environment is warm and inviting, the sound

of trickling water permeates the building, and planter boxes hang from

the ceiling. The system provides habitat for a wide range of species as an

integral part of its functioning. By affirming the patterns that maintain

healthy organisms and ecosystems, it achieves a high quality of treat-

ment with minimal energy input and chemical intervention. The organ-

isms themselves do the work of wastewater treatment, forming a kind of

“living machine” much more flexible than its mechanical counterparts.

In conventional treatment, chlorine is added to sterilize the waste-

water. While this meets the immediate goal of neutralizing pathogens

with modest effectiveness, chlorine creates highly toxic byproducts. In a

living machine, the diversity of plants, fish, and other species destroys

pathogens in the hurly-burly of the rich tank environments. Clearly, a

process that neutralizes toxins while producing clean water and sup-

porting a verdant greenhouse is more desirable than a process that gen-

erates additional toxins and squanders nutrients.


The exquisite complexity of the Providence living machine was not

fully orchestrated in advance. Instead, it unfolded as a threefold process

embracing seeding with diversity, intelligence webs, and emergence.

This threefold process underlies all successful self-designing systems.

Seeding with diversity is a way of catalyzing creativity by providing a di-

verse repertoire of behaviors for the system to build on. Intelligence

webs generate holistic responses from local perceptions and actions.

Emergence is the spontaneous appearance of properties or levels of or-

ganization that are not apparent in the parts making up the system.

Self-designing systems perform valuable functions without explicit

instructions. They grow their own connections, discover their own so-

lutions, and create their own structures. They do all of this in a fully

participatory way, without a central processing unit or a five-star gen-

eral to coordinate the proceedings. Because new behaviors are allowed

to emerge, self-designing systems confound our cherished notions of

control, yet perform with grace and coherence.

Self-designing processes are more robust if they are seeded with a

wide diversity of elements. Depending on the context, the diversity

might be at the level of species, ecosystems, cultures, businesses, or

technologies. The diversity allows adaptation to a great range of exter-

nal disturbances and opportunities. For instance, polycultures help

guarantee a minimal harvest since the crops will self-select under

duress. Each element in a self-designing system is a source of knowl-

edge, and therefore a possible contributor to a viable solution.

In a well-seeded system, the components can flourish even as they are

challenged by changing conditions. They can maintain their integrity as

individuals while entering a systemwide dialogue. Indeed, “once we un-

derstand the purposeful mechanisms built by natural selection we can

recognize the splendid miniaturization and complexity [of ecosystems],

which many misinterpreted earlier as a symptom of accident, disorder,

and randomness. Guiding the self-managing systems of nature now

seems far more sensible than the destruction of our life-support bases


or dangerous, clumsy attempts to substitute our untried and expensive

[technologies].”32 The living world—in all its diversity—offers a rich

source of evolutionary design wisdom, waiting to be tapped.

Seeding a living machine well is critical, since it relies on ecological

diversity for self-repair, protection, and overall efficiency. In a statement

of design principles for living machines, John Todd emphasizes many

sorts of diversity: diverse microbial communities to provide a wide

range of metabolic functions, diverse photosynthetic communities to

utilize sunlight, diverse geological and mineral sources to provide trace

nutrients, and diverse phyla, from bacteria to vertebrates, to explore all

available niches. For sound thermodynamic reasons, “a diversity of or-

ganisms and habitats should permit the chemical [flexibility] of an eco-

logically engineered system to be maximized, since each phylum, taxon,

and individual is characterized by unique biochemical signatures.”33

This flexibility is what allows the system to neutralize toxins and utilize

a range of nutrients.

Todd also stresses the need for at least three different, strongly con-

nected ecosystems in a living machine. This rule is very intriguing, for it

hints that there is a threshold of complexity beyond which a system can

self-design even under stress. Below this threshold, systems break down

and deteriorate in novel situations. In the same way, there is a level of

diversity beyond which agricultural systems become resistant to pests,

diseases, and weeds, improve their nutrient cycling, and maintain their

soil. Without this diversity, crops remain dependent on additional in-

puts for their continued survival.

The intelligence web is a self-designing system’s behavioral core. It is

a dance in which the elements of the system can resonate together, shar-

ing information locally in a way that produces large-scale integrity. The

intelligence web is not driven by a hierarchical chain of command. In-

stead, it grows and responds in a distributed fashion, without a cen-

ter/periphery opposition. There is an unfolding of form and action that

proceeds in strictly local fashion, yet produces systemwide harmonies.


The process of organismal growth and development, morphogenesis,

provides a good example of an intelligence web. As trees grow, butter-

flies develop wing patterns, leopards form spots, or orchids bloom, a

decentralized network of cells differentiates, splits, and shifts position,

responding only to local signals. Just as convection cells create spatial

structure from a featureless background when a critical temperature

threshold is crossed, rich forms burst forth from the developing organ-

ism.

In a fire ant colony, notes Roger Lewin, “the nutritional needs of the

colony are ‘known’ by the whole colony, because the workers con-

stantly exchange samples of their stomach contents, effectively creating

a single stomach for the colony.”34 In the same way, the organisms that

work together in a living machine share a common chemical language.

They collectively regulate their own metabolic processes and maintain

conditions favorable for their own continuing existence. In an intelli-

gence web, each element requires the others for its identity and con-

text. There is information and intelligence not just in the pieces, but in

the pattern of connections. Like a spider web, if it is touched in one

place, it will respond in another.

The intelligence web is a counterpoint to the crisis of complexity dis-

cussed earlier. It is a decentralized response to complexity that allows

local responses to be integrated through effective communication. For

instance, cognitive scientists are finding that networks of neurons are

able to store memories in a distributed fashion. No single neuron car-

ries the memory, only a whole cluster of neurons acting in concert. The

same is true of antibodies acting within the human immune system. In-

telligence webs radically enhance the effectiveness of their components.

Emergence is at the heart of self-designing systems. Seed with diver-

sity, let the intelligence web unfold, and the system may spontaneously

exhibit rich new behaviors not possessed by its parts. Emergence is a

leap to a qualitatively new level of self-integration. It is a new type of or-

der bubbling up from the alchemy of rich interactions among simple

components.


In the early seeding stages, a living machine is typically erratic.

Sometimes it produces pure water, sometimes not. Yet it is beginning to

self-design. Species are finding appropriate habitat, and their numbers

are beginning to reflect the qualities of the incoming water. Suddenly,

the system is able to handle wide variations in input while still produc-

ing reliably clean effluent. The system has acquired an emergent prop-

erty: resilience.

Living machines are deliberately set up to self-design in response to

the exact characteristics of the wastewater. In the Providence facility,

“the sub-ecosystems self-design differently at each stage in response to

input variations in external factors such as light or to internal variations

in the strength of the waste stream. These self-design combinations are

dynamic and highly varied.”35 It is rarely clear in advance what the key

species will turn out to be; however, the initial seeding with a diversity

of organisms, metabolisms, and habitats ensures that some viable sys-

tem configuration will emerge.

If you place the common chemicals driving the Belousov-Zhabotin-

skii reaction in a petri dish, something rich and strange happens.36 Con-

tradicting our expectations of entropic decay and disorder, after a few

minutes, spiral waves spread out in the dish (figure 19). Slight impurities

anchor these emergent geometries, which are maintained by a series of

reactions occurring far from equilibrium. This reaction is a good

metaphor for self-designing systems. Through some unsuspected inter-

nal dynamic, they burst forth with a complexity and coherence all their

own.

Instead of employing vast amounts of energy, materials, and central-

ized intelligence to control systems, it may be easier to encourage their

own self-designing tendencies. We can allow useful properties to

emerge rather than deliberately impose them. Self-design suggests a

creative world, one of playful experimentation with new forms and pos-

sibilities. For too long we have expected the design professions to bend

an inert world into shape. The alternative is to try to gently catalyze the

self-designing potentialities of nature.


Ecotones

It is early morning on Richardson Bay, an arm of San Francisco Bay a

few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. As Sim leaves his houseboat

to row, the great blue heron perched on a piling next to the boat takes

notice and shifts her weight uneasily. Sim goes about preparing his row-

ing shell, and she continues her vigil. A pair of egrets passes close by and

takes up position on a nearby float. The gulls continue their noisy

breakfast on the houseboat’s roof, dropping mussel shells all about. As


FIGURE 19. Successive stages in the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction showing for-mation of spiral scroll waves

Sim glides along the water a few strokes from home, he notices a paral-

lel wake close by. A sea lion raises his shiny black head for a moment,

greets him with a short snort, and disappears into the cold grey waters.

He pulls past the old vessels, now improvised homes, which are

anchored out beyond the dock, and heads out along the breakwater of

the marina next door. The pilings are occupied by cormorants drying

their outstretched wings and pelicans nestling long beaks on puffy

chests. The morning air is still. A cottony layer of fog lies on the hills

above Sausalito. The morning commute stream is heading up Waldo

Grade toward the bridge. It is quiet on the waterfront except for the

usual bantering of the gulls and the occasional screech of a passing

egret. . . .

The edge of the bay is an example of what ecologists call an ecotone.

It is an edge where two or more different types of natural environments

join. Here their inhabitants come together to eat, mingle, reproduce,

play, and enrich the game of life. An ecotone is a soft overlapping of

very different regions. Like patches of watercolors on wet paper, differ-

ent regions intermingle in an ecotone to create a new spectrum of col-

ors. Ecotones are highly permeable. They are the opposite of a hard

edge or boundary that presents a barrier to the flow of resources, en-

ergy, or communication. Not surprisingly, they also tend to be places of

maximum biological diversity and productivity.

In its natural condition, the bay-edge ecotone where water meets

land is usually a tidal marsh. In the marsh, freshwater meets saltwater,

providing the proper salt content for the spawning and hatching of

many species of marine life. The nutrients and detritus brought down-

stream are absorbed by bacteria living on aquatic grasses. They are, in

turn, grazed by larger microscopic creatures that are food for small fish

and frogs, themselves the prey of aquatic birds. An ecotone such as a

marsh is an active, fecund place.

Along the shores of Richardson Bay, much of the native marsh eco-

tone is gone, although patches remain. The process began more than a


hundred years ago, when unseaworthy ships were left to rot near the

shoreline. Hills were blasted to make roads, and the rubble was

dumped at the shore’s edge. The native ecotone was damaged mostly

by large-scale public projects: road building and war shipyards. If the

planners of the 1940s had been given their way, an eight-lane highway

would have been built along the waterfront, leaving only a dead zone

between the highway and the water. Happily, this proposal was de-

feated. At the start of World War II, Kaiser and Bechtel—two large

wartime contractors—built a huge new shipyard along several miles of

the Sausalito waterfront on top of fill excavated during the construction

of the new access highway to the Golden Gate Bridge. Along the shore-

line road to the town of Mill Valley, more marsh was filled to make

room for roadside businesses, and the road, which was underwater at

high tides, was raised.

Unfortunately, most design is hostile to ecotones. In reaction to the

rapid, haphazard growth of cities in the industrial era, city-planning

practice as it developed in the early twentieth century zoned develop-

ment into separate single-use land areas for housing, industry, com-

merce, and recreation. Government action discouraged and often ruth-

lessly eliminated the older, more organic concept of mixed uses in close

proximity. Architects focused on creating new prototypes for single-use

buildings. These templates inevitably neglected edges and interfaces

with other systems.

Architects are still designing the it, and seldom the edge, even

though it is at the edges, or ecotones, where the richest exchanges and

interactions take place. The result is that modern cities and buildings

have hard edges, and they tend to discourage ecotones. Planning and

development still favor clear separation between land uses, and of

course the automobile eats ecotones like a video-game Pac-Man. Thus

we are left with the sterile empty plazas, parking lots, and highway

edges of much new development.


The intentionally cultivated ecotone promotes contact among peo-

ple and between people and nature. For example, the garden, the vil-

lage, and the diversified family farm are historically rich ecotones that

incorporate a complex set of interfaces between people and nature.

Other ecotones are accidents. The town-gown edge where campuses

meet the local community is an example. Here one finds the traditional

habitat of intellectuals and bohemians, namely the coffeehouses and

cheap eating places where theories are mulled over, politics dissected,

and great and not-so-great ideas hatched. Grandiose urban-renewal

schemes often sweep away such vibrant places.

While the native-marsh ecotone was being diminished by develop-

ment, a new type of ecotone was being created along the Richardson

Bay waterfront. The end of the war left the vast, once busy shipyards

empty. Mountains of industrial and marine debris were abandoned.

Serviceable vessels and machines could be had for next to nothing, and

land and water space could be leased for a few dollars a month from the

easy-going Portuguese who took over much of the former shipyards. A

host of free-spirited folk began to recycle the junk left over from the

dismantling of the war shipyards into impromptu aquatic homes. Steel

landcraft, balloon barges, retired ferryboats replaced by the bridges,

and industrial sheds became snug floating homes and workplaces. The

waterfront attracted artists, writers, and intellectuals, including the

philosopher Alan Watts and the artist Jean Varda, and small, creative,

home-grown, useful ventures, like the first conceptual design/art

group, Ant Farm, and Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. What had

been a native ecotone of plants and animals became a remarkable social

ecotone, an edge where a rich diversity of people and activities took

hold, coexisting with the earlier native life.

By designing ecotones rather than hard edges, we intensify interac-

tions. We bring together a greater diversity of life in an ecological eco-

tone, and we encourage greater cultural and economic diversity in an


urban ecotone. In doing this, we facilitate the flows of materials, en-

ergy, and information that can catalyze self-designing processes.

Biodiversity

The biologist E. O. Wilson defines biodiversity as “the variety of organ-

isms considered at all levels, from genetic variants belonging to the

same species through arrays of species to arrays of genera, families, and

still higher taxonomic levels; includes the variety of ecosystems, which

comprise both the communities of organisms within particular habitats

and the physical conditions under which they live.”37 Biodiversity is the

true harvest of four billion years of evolutionary design. It is the pattern

of connections that maintains life on this planet. Enfolded within biodi-

versity is the genetic information that fits organism to organism and or-

ganism to environment. The diversity of life encompasses some ten to

fifty million species, each possessing from thousands to millions of

genes. Our attempts to map this biological complexity are so incom-

plete that insect traps in the Amazon routinely catch dozens of com-

pletely new, uncatalogued species.

We’re losing this diversity fast. Over evolutionary time, about one

species per million has gone extinct each year. Human activity has in-

creased this background level of extinction a thousandfold. According

to Wilson, even the most cautious projections suggest that “the num-

ber of species doomed each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each

hour 3.”38 The diversity of life is a pharmacopoeia, a source of genetic

variability for agriculture, a trove of potentially valuable materials. It is

also much more than this. It is our evolutionary home.

Ecological design, at the deepest level, is design for biodiversity. If

we fail to design with our fellow creatures in mind, we will ultimately

fail ourselves. As the philosopher Bryan Norton suggests, “The value of

biodiversity is the value of everything there is. It is the summed value of

all the GNPs of all countries from now until the end of the world. We


know that, because our very lives and our economies are dependent

upon biodiversity.”39 Biodiversity is the most exquisite form of com-

plexity in the world. It is holistic and dynamic, woven together within

vast landscapes, in entire ecosystems, irreducible to species-by-species

considerations. As we lose the Amazon rainforest, we lose clues to liv-

ing well. Species that have made their way in the world suddenly lose

their habitat and go extinct, forever extinguishing their coevolutionary

wisdom.

A few years ago, a series of experiments focused on the effect of spa-

tially complex environments on aphid-ladybird beetle interactions.40

On plots with a continuous cover of goldenrod, the ladybird beetles

kept aphid populations low through predation. On plots with a mixed

pattern of goldenrod and grass patches, something surprising hap-

pened. The ladybird beetles were averse to moving over open grass, but

the aphids were not. This enabled the aphids to disperse more quickly,

finding temporary refuges from predation and increasing their num-

bers. Of course, with higher numbers of aphids, more beetles could also

be supported. Adding spatial structure—changing the pattern of habi-

tat—increased the population levels of both species.

We can take this story as a parable for the emerging view of ecology

and complexity. The aphids and beetles do not reach a state of grace,

some “balance of nature.” They move back and forth on a landscape of

grass and goldenrod, their numbers swelling here and declining there,

with the ultimate outcome uncertain, hinging on random fluctuations.

The historian Donald Worster echoes this theme: “Nature, many have

begun to believe, is fundamentally erratic, discontinuous, and unpre-

dictable. It is full of seemingly random events that elude our models of

how things are supposed to work. As a result, the unexpected keeps hit-

ting us in the face. Clouds collect and disperse, rain falls or doesn’t fall,

disregarding our careful weather predictions, and we cannot explain

why.”41 The rich complexities of the natural world provide a powerful

antidote to hubris, for if there are fundamental limits to our knowledge


of ecosystem dynamics, we cannot easily “optimize” our tree farms, na-

ture reserves, or levels of carbon dioxide emissions. We are left with hu-

mility and uncertainty.

Not so long ago, our ideas about the balance of nature promised the

existence of mature communities with population levels at equilibrium.

The theory of succession held that ecological communities moved

through predictable stages to a final, climax community. A typical suc-

cessional sequence might begin with bare rock colonized by sturdy or-

ganisms like mosses and lichens. Over time, the rock is broken down,

slowly producing soil. This impoverished soil is suitable for a few tough

grasses to take root. Later, taller plants provide shade and moderate the

climate. After hundreds of years, a full-fledged forest develops. Other

sequences for different climax ecosystems can easily be imagined.

While this story is undoubtedly roughly correct, there is growing ev-

idence that the old picture of regular succession leading to a predictable

climax community fails to capture many important nuances. One of the

current controversies in ecology concerns the assembly of food webs—

that is, how the various species making up an ecosystem actually come

together. A recent computer simulation is revealing.42 Several dozen

species were randomly generated, filling roles as producers, consumers,

and decomposers. Based on their roles, they were given propensities to

cooperate or compete with one another. Artificial food webs were as-

sembled by simulating the synthetic ecosystem, adding new species at

random and deleting species as they went extinct. Remarkably, the as-

sembled food webs were all different. There was no dominant set of

species that could drive out the others, and therefore no climax com-

munity. Instead, the final outcome depended on the precise order in

which species were added.

Biodiversity is not static. It is played out against a background of spa-

tial complexity, disturbances, local extinctions, and landscape-level

movements. Sometimes we prefer to imagine that biodiversity can still

be supported by grossly oversimplified ecosystems, like the clearcut-


riddled old-growth in the Pacific Northwest or a few wild but discon-

nected national parks or national wilderness areas. Sometimes, too, we

forget that ecosystems have coevolved with characteristic types of dis-

turbance—forests and prairies with wildfires, floodplains with floods—

and that biodiversity hinges on complex patterns of habitat, climate,

and renewal. It cannot be maintained one species at a time or in one

place at a time. It depends on a whole continuum of landscapes, from

the fully domesticated to the fully wild.

The problems connected with ecosystem stability are compounded

when we recognize that populations are subject to various random in-

fluences, each tending to decrease their viability. Some of these influ-

ences, identified by R. Edward Grumbine, include:

1. Genetic uncertainty, or random changes in genetic makeup . . .

which alter the survival and reproductive capabilities of indi-

viduals.

2. Demographic uncertainty resulting from random events in the

survival and reproduction of individuals in populations

3. Environmental uncertainty due to unpredictable changes in cli-

mate, weather, food supply, and the populations of competitors,

predators, etc.

4. Catastrophic uncertainty from such phenomena as hurricanes,

fires, droughts, etc., which occur at random intervals43

It is clear from this list that “ecologists are confronted with the ques-

tion of why complex ecosystems do, in fact, exist.”44 The emerging an-

swer is that local populations of a given species are continually going ex-

tinct, only to be reconstituted from nearby or more distant surviving

populations. The whole landscape plays a role in keeping ecosystems in-

tact. If we make ecosystems impervious to exchange, they fall apart.

Ecosystems, even large ones, lack sufficient internal feedbacks to pre-

serve themselves for very long. If “conservation biologists were


pressed,” observes Grumbine, “they might distill their theories into this

advice: Think big, think connected, think whole.”45 In a deep sense, to

maintain a single species, we must maintain certain critical aspects of the

whole landscape, from the scale of a few miles to a few thousand miles.

We must also maintain the communities that in turn support the

species.

Diverse local ecosystems are the building blocks of biodiversity.

However, the additional stability, resiliency, and self-designing proper-

ties they confer are contingent on the existence of other nearby ecosys-

tems. Diverse ecosystems are healthy tiles in an ecological mosaic span-

ning entire continents. The ecological mosaic, in turn, can replenish its

individual tiles when local disturbances or extinctions occur.

Biodiversity implies a diversity of species, but it also implies a diver-

sity of ecosystems and, ultimately, of regions themselves. It can be pre-

served only by addressing all three levels: maintaining viable popula-

tions of native species, protecting representatives of all native ecosystem

types in a range of successional states, and honoring wide-scale ecologi-

cal processes including fire regimes, hydrological cycles, and movement

patterns.46 Such preservation in the face of critical threats like habitat

fragmentation, road building, mining, destructive logging practices,

and global climate change will require unprecedented kinds of ecologi-

cal design.

Fortunately, the formative disciplines of landscape ecology and con-

servation biology are starting to give us some powerful design tools to

maintain biodiversity even in the context of massive human interven-

tions. The basic building block is a core reserve off-limits to all uses.

Each reserve is bounded by a buffer zone with increasingly intensive

land uses around it. An elaborate version of the reserve-buffer zone sys-

tem has been adapted by UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere program,

which has developed a global system of almost three hundred biosphere

reserves.47

At the national level, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is undertak-

ing an ambitious biodiversity mapping project known as “gap analysis.”


This project works from layers of geographical vegetation data and

known species-vegetation associations to identify unrepresented ecosys-

tem types, habitats for endangered species, or diversity “hot spots.” If

these areas are unprotected, they are given priority status in the creation

of future reserves or wilderness areas.48

But even carefully selected reserves are not sufficient to maintain

biodiversity. Species that have suffered from severe habitat fragmenta-

tion may not be able to maintain viable populations without wildlife

corridors (figure 20) to connect their small protected areas. Wildlife cor-

ridors increase effective habitat area by allowing safe movement across

the landscape. Streambanks, power lines, and hedgerows are commonly

occurring wildlife corridors, but they do not meet the needs of all

species. Deliberately designed and protected corridors provide a crucial

kind of connectivity in an otherwise fragmented landscape.49

Large mammals are particularly threatened by habitat loss. The griz-

zly bear offers the most disconcerting example. A single grizzly requires

about one hundred square miles for its home range. Given that five


FIGURE 20. Core reserves, buffer zones, and wildlife corridors

hundred or more bears are required for long-term population viability,

this means a minimum of fifty thousand square miles of habitat, far

larger than any wild area in the lower forty-eight states. Clearly, no sin-

gle wilderness area will satisfy the grizzlies’ habitat needs. However,

wilderness corridors linking separate wilderness patches could poten-

tially create an overall habitat area large enough to support a viable griz-

zly population. The following design guidelines, delineated by J. T. R.

Kalkoven, show how this might work:

• Increase the size and the quality of the habitat patches in order to

increase the local population size and to diminish the risk of ex-

tinction.

• Increase the number of patches in order to improve the possibility

for [movement] and recolonization.

• Decrease the resistance of the landscape by including corridors and

reducing the effect of barriers, in order to enhance the possibility

of dispersal.50

These guidelines are being put to good use in the proposed North-

ern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (H.R. 2638). According to the

supporting literature, “None of the remaining wildland ecosystems of

the Wild Rockies Bioregion are of sufficient size to perpetuate self-

sustaining populations of native wildlife and native biological diversity

on their own—the ecosystems are dependent on each other. Therefore,

a system of biological connecting corridors is protected by the Act.

These wildland areas are found between the major ecosystems of the re-

gion and are essential for wildlife and plant migration and genetic inter-

change.”51 The act provides a holistic form of ecosystem protection that

explicitly connects several of America’s most beautiful wildernesses (fig-

ure 21) and is based on the principle that biodiversity thrives in interre-

lated ecosystems. Similar wilderness-corridor networks have been pro-

posed for other areas, including the Cascade region straddling

Washington State and British Columbia.


We are learning to see natural history in terms of unrepeatable yet

patterned narratives that encompass the collected creature-wisdom of

the planet. Classical economic notions of optimization and efficiency

are no longer adequate to describe the ecological complexity surround-

ing us. As the ecologist Daniel Botkin has noted, “Wherever we seek to

find constancy we discover change. . . . we find that [nature] is not con-

stant in form, structure, or proportion, but changes at every scale of

time and space. The old idea of a static landscape, like a single musical

chord sounded forever, must be abandoned, for such a landscape never

existed except in our imagination. Nature undisturbed by human influ-

ence seems more like a symphony whose harmonies arise from variation


FIGURE 21. System of core reserves, buffer zones, and wildlife corridors proposedby Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act

and change over every interval of time.”52 As we begin to see beyond

cherished notions of equilibrium and balance in nature, we see a deeper,

more exquisite set of patterns.

We must also recall that biological diversity and cultural diversity are

deeply linked. Locally adapted traditional knowledge systems that help

maintain diverse ecosystems are rapidly disappearing. “Diversity is the

characteristic of nature and the basis of ecological stability,” explains

Vandana Shiva. “Diverse ecosystems give rise to diverse life forms, and

to diverse cultures. The co-evolution of culture, life forms, and habitats

has conserved the biological diversity on this planet. Cultural diversity

and biological diversity go hand in hand.”53 Contemporary agribusiness

and industry produce a kind of “monoculture of the mind,” says Shiva.

As ecosystems lose their diversity, so do our own patterns of thought.

Designing for biodiversity will require us to break free of our monocul-

tures of the mind and see clearly our embeddedness in the living world.

The hard work, which is just beginning, is to translate this awareness

into effective design strategies, at scales ranging from a backyard to a

city to a continent.

Notes

1. Susan Oyama, “The Conceptualization of Nature: Nature as Design,” inGaia 2: Emergence: The New Science of Becoming, ed. William Irwin Thompson(Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1991), 180.

2. Thanks to Katy Langstaff for valuable discussions incorporated in this sec-tion.

3. This metaphor is from a lecture by Hardin Tibbs.4. Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History

Press, 1969), 5.5. Wendell Berry, Collected Poems: 1957–1982 (San Francisco: North Point

Press, 1984), 103.6. Robert A. Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos, “Strategies for Manufac-

turing,” Scientific American 261, no. 3 (September 1989): 144.7. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Mi-

crobial Evolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 99–114.


8. Hardin Tibbs, “Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for In-dustry,” Whole Earth Review, no. 77 (winter 1992): 9.

9. Yan Jingsong and Ma Shijun, “The Function of Ecological Engineeringin Environmental Conservation with Some Case Studies from China,” in Eco-logical Engineering for Wastewater Treatment, ed. Carl Etnier and Björn Gut-terstam (Gothenburg, Sweden: Bokskogen, 1991), 89.

10. Barbara Matilsky, Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists’ Interpretationsand Solutions (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 111.

11. John Harte et al., Toxics A to Z: A Guide to Everyday Pollution Hazards(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1991), 54.

12. This work is being pioneered by the Gaia Institute in New York City.13. California Waste Exchange, Directory of Industrial Recyclers and Listing

of Hazardous Wastes Available for Recycling (Sacramento: Department of ToxicSubstances Control, Hazardous Waste Management Program, 1993).

14. Tibbs, Industrial Ecology, 5.15. Ibid., 9–10.16. John Tillman Lyle, Design for Hunan Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use,

and Natural Resources (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985), 236–7.17. Ann L. Riley, “The Greening of Federal Flood Control Policies: The

Wildcat–San Pablo Creeks Case,” in The Ecological City: Preserving and Restor-ing Urban Biodiversity, ed. Rutherford H. Platt, Rowan A. Rowntree, andPamela C. Muick (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 217–30.

18. G. Hollis et al., “Wise Use of Resources,” Nature and Resources 24(1988): 2–13.

19. John Tillman Lyle, Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 102.

20. Michael Hough, “Design with City Nature,” in The Ecological City: Pre-serving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity, ed. Rutherford H. Platt, Rowan A.Rowntree, and Pamela C. Muick (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press,1994), 44.

21. Robert L. Thayer, Jr., Gray World, Green Heart: Technology, Nature, andthe Sustainable Landscape (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 263.

22. For information on the Arcata marsh, see Lyle, Regenerative Design,242–3; Thayer, Gray World, 155–9; and Doug Stewart, “Nothing Goes to Wastein Arcata’s Teeming Marshes,” Smithsonian 21, no. 1 (April 1990): 175–9.

23. Ibid., 177.24. Judith D. Soule and Jon K. Piper, Farming in Nature’s Image: An Eco-

logical Approach to Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1992), 133–4.25. David Austin, personal communication.


26. For a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, known as the Bénardconvection, see Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine, Exploring Complexity: AnIntroduction (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1989), 8–13.

27. The odd dynamics of slime molds are discussed in Arthur T. Winfree,When Time Breaks Down: The Three-Dimensional Dynamics of ElectrochemicalWaves and Cardiac Arrhythmias (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), 173–7.

28. John Briggs, Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos: Discovering a New Aestheticof Art, Science, and Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 112.

29. Howard T. Odum, “Ecological Engineering and Self-Organization,” inEcological Engineering: An Introduction to Ecotechnology, ed. William J. Mitschand S. E. Jørgensen (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1989), 80.

30. William J. Mitsch and S. E. Jørgensen, “Introduction to Ecological En-gineering,” in Ecological Engineering: An Introduction to Ecotechnology, ed.William J. Mitsch and S. E. Jørgensen (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1989), 6.

31. Tom Crane and John Todd, “Solar Aquatics: Nature’s Engineering,”Pollution Engineering (15 May 1992): 51.

32. Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society (New York: JohnWiley & Sons, 1971), 101.

33. This quotation is from a manuscript version of Paul Mankiewicz’s paper“Biological Surfaces, Metabolic Capacitance, Growth, and Differentiation: ATheoretical Exploration of Thermodynamic, Economic, and Material Efficien-cies in Fluid Purification Systems,” a 1993 report from the Center for Restora-tion of Waters, Falmouth, Mass.

34. Roger Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (New York: Macmil-lan, 192), 175.

35. John Todd, “Living Machines for Pure Water: Sewage as Resource,” inMending the Earth: A World for Our Grandchildren, ed. Paul Rothkrug andRobert L. Olson (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1991), 117–8.

36. See Nicolis and Prigogine, Exploring Complexity, 15–26.37. Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Harvard Univ.

Press, 1992), 393.38. Ibid., 280.39. Bryan Norton, “Commodity, Amenity, and Morality: The Limits of

Quantification in Valuing Biodiversity,” in Biodiversity, ed. Edward O. Wilson(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988), 201.

40. These experiments are discussed in P. Karieva, “Predator-Prey Dynamicsin Spatially Structured Populations: Manipulating Dispersal in a Coccinellid-


Aphid Interaction,” Mathematical Ecology: Lecture Notes in Biomathematics 54(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1984), 368–89.

41. Donald Worster, “The Ecology of Chaos and Harmony,” Environmen-tal History Review 14 (1990): 13.

42. See, for instance, J. A. Drake, “The Mechanics of Community Assemblyand Succession,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 147 (1990): 213–34.

43. R. Edward Grumbine, Ghost Bears: Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis(Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1992), 32.

44. D. L. DeAngelis and J. C. Waterhouse, “Equilibrium and Nonequilib-rium Concepts in Ecological Models,” Ecological Monographs 57, no. 1 (1987): 1–21.

45. Grumbine, Ghost Bears, 62.46. Reed F. Noss and Allen Y. Cooperrider, Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protect-

ing and Restoring Biodiversity (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994), 89.47. For a rich, extended discussion of biosphere reserves, see The Law of the

Mother: Protecting Indigenous People in Protected Areas, ed. Elizabeth Kemf(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1993).

48. Noss and Cooperrider, Saving Nature’s Legacy, 113–8.49. Ibid., 150–7.50. J. T. R. Kalkoven, “Survival of Populations and the Scale of the Frag-

mented, Agricultural Landscape,” in Landscape Ecology and Agroecosystems, ed.R. G. H. Bunce et al. (Boca Raton, Fla.: Lewis Publishers, 1993), 89.

51. Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (Missoula, Mont.: Wild Rock-ies Action Fund, 1993). Pamphlet.

52. Daniel B. Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 62.

53. Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity andBiotechnology (London: Zed books, 1993), 65.


FOURTH PRINCIPLE

Everyone is a Designer

169

Listen to every voice in the design process. No one is participant only

or designer only: Everyone is a participant-designer. Honor the spe-

cial knowledge that each person brings. As people work together to

heal their places, they also heal themselves.

Cultivating Design Intelligence

We are all designers. We constantly make decisions that shape our own

futures and those of others. We choose our everyday reality: where and

how we live, how we use our time and energy, what we value and whom

we care about, how we earn and how we spend. All these choices in-

volve dimensions of design.

For most of our tenure as a species, design has been intuitive. It has

been embedded in culture, learned through daily participation in the

life of the family and community. Local knowledge and materials gave

communities everything necessary to design, build, and maintain their

places. Every community member knew the appropriate design tem-

plates and could replicate most of them. Everyone could build a wall

that would stand up, lay out a rice terrace impervious to erosion, or

construct a cooking fireplace that concentrated the heat under the pot.

People lived with their designs, directly—sometimes painfully—experi-

encing success or failure, and learning accordingly. People learned to be

designers by doing.

More recently, a vast professional design apparatus has supplanted

these intuitive design processes. In the United States, few people have

the competence to build their own houses, grow their own food, or

provide their own water—tasks once considered fundamental to any

community member. Dozens of fragmented design disciplines shape

the material basis of our lives. As a consequence, the ecological implica-

tions of design have largely been removed from our awareness.


Ecological design suggests a deeply participatory process in which

technical disciplinary languages and barriers are exchanged for a shared

understanding of the design problem. Ecological design changes the

old rules about what counts for knowledge and who counts as knower.

It suggests that sustainability is a cultural process rather than an expert

one, and that we should all acquire a basic competence in the shaping of

our world.

Unfortunately, in the case of architecture, conventional educational

practices still largely follow the myth put forward by Ayn Rand in her

novel The Fountainhead, in which a lone idiosyncratic architect fights

against a hostile and philistine world. Architectural design is generally

not taught as a collaborative process that clients or users have any stake

in. Rather, it is often taught as a “pure” process that should not be “con-

taminated” by any real-world constraints or needs: social, environmen-

tal, or economic. It is even fashionable to approach design education as a

form of personal therapy—the artist’s struggle for self-expression.

Architecture was still a craft at the time of the atelier, the studio ap-

prentice system that developed at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris during

the nineteenth century. Students apprenticed to working architects,

who also gave them design exercises. Architects were concerned with

form and style, which tended to follow Greek, Roman, Gothic, and

Renaissance precedents. Students learned these styles by constructing

painstaking pencil and watercolor drawings of admired examples from

the past. The studio master would concoct programs or briefs for imag-

inary building projects that the students would design. Their individu-

ally produced works were judged at reviews by panels of architects, and

prizes were awarded for the most outstanding designs.

The studio system was gradually incorporated within university edu-

cation in the United States and other countries, beginning with the first

university-level professional training in architecture at the Massachu-

setts Institute of Technology in 1868. Almost unchanged, it is still the

dominant force in design education today. If you visit any one of the

roughly one hundred collegiate schools of architecture and design in

the United States, you will find a special world removed from the rest of

university life. Architecture students typically spend long nights, week-

ends, and much of their class time laboring over drafting tables in stu-

dios cluttered with pinned-up drawings, half-finished models, and

wastebaskets overflowing with crumpled-up yellow tracing paper.

For better or worse, the culture of design grows out of the studio

system. To their credit, studios do offer unique opportunities for inter-

disciplinary learning and wide synthesis. They provide large blocks of

time to examine problems in depth. Students learn through case stud-

ies, although these are rarely grounded in actual places and communi-

ties. In fact, the studio could provide an important venue for teaching

ecological design. It could be a place where students are introduced to

real problems and real people, a place of rich interaction with other dis-

ciplines both inside and outside the university. It could allow students

to learn design as a cooperative, interdisciplinary activity.

Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog and an astute ob-

server of architects and building, suggests that the problem with archi-

tectural design education is that the real players and the real informa-

tion are kept out of the learning:

By considering buildings whole, university architecture departments

could reverse their trend towards senescence. They could invigorate the

faculty with an infusion of facilities managers, preservationists, interior

designers, developers, project managers, engineers, contractors, con-

struction lawyers, and insurance mongers. The department could pro-

mote some of the marginalized people they already have—building econ-

omists, vernacular building historians, and post occupancy evaluators. In

that enriched context, what’s left of art oriented architecture would have

all that its creativity could handle exploring new syntheses of the flood of

data and ideas.1

Studios as research/design clinics could begin to build a cumulative

knowledge base that is lacking in design fields such as architecture. The

present work of design studios is wasted on one-time exercises that are

171Everyone is a Designer

rarely implemented outside the classroom. Studios based on analyzing

particular issues—megacities, urban wildlife corridors, the future of sub-

urbs, constructed wetlands—would provide a continuous cycle of infor-

mation. Instead of “seeing our education as a training in the design of

buildings,” writes Thomas Fisher, “some are beginning to see that what

we really learn is how to assimilate large amounts of disparate informa-

tion and find ways to order it and apply it to different settings.”2

Only through actually implementing a design does one begin to un-

derstand it. Since design students never actually implement their de-

signs and are often separated from real-world concerns, they are starved

for concrete experience. In other professions, including law and medi-

cine, supervised fieldwork is part of the education. In these professions,

academic theory and actual practice reinforce and complement each

other. Fieldwork is a way of focusing attention on issues that deserve

more attention. In fact, much of the pioneering work on ecological de-

sign began as field-oriented classes through established design schools

and nonprofit education and research centers such as the Farallones In-

stitute and the New Alchemy Institute.

Donald Watson, a leader in sustainable design, suggests a number of

immediate opportunities for cooperation among the schools and the

professions:

• Case studies and postoccupancy appraisals of buildings. Using sim-

ple evaluation tools, teams could carry out case-study evaluations

of how particular environments and buildings actually perform.

• Design competitions. Design competitions stimulate public and

professional awareness of new ideas. In California, a competition

to design new energy-efficient state buildings worked to educate

architects and was used as a studio project. Three student/faculty

teams were among the top winners.

• Community workshops. Community design workshops—some-

times called charettes—are an effective way to involve the public in


community design issues and enhance their understanding of new

strategies.3

Another possibility is to create a new ecological design discipline

within existing academic institutions. An ecological design center on

campus would explicitly address the massive social and environmental

crisis we face. Through practical design projects, students would learn

to work with wider communities and acquire basic ecological literacy,

thereby gaining the valuable habit of responding effectively to complex,

interdisciplinary problems in their own backyards. David W. Orr pro-

vides a list of typical projects such a center could undertake:

• Design of a building with no outside energy sources that recycles

all waste generated by occupants, constructed from locally avail-

able, environmentally benign materials

• Development of a bioregional directory of building materials

• Inventory of campus resource flows

• Restoration of a degraded ecosystem on or near campus

• Design of a low-input, sustainable farm system

• Economic survey of resource and dollar flows in the regional

economy

• Design of living machines for campus effluents4

We are accustomed to seeing designers as artists or technicians, each

role insulated in its own way from everyday life. Architect Linda Groat

proposes a third possibility more germane to ecological design: the de-

signer as cultivator.

The term cultivator derives from the same Latin root as the word cul-

ture. . . . The contemporary sense of the word includes not only the nur-

turing of the land, but also the care and training of the human mind and

sensibilities. . . . Whereas the architect-as-artist stands apart from or in


opposition to society, the cultivator is fully engaged . . . whereas the ar-

chitect-as-technician responds to the power and autonomy of social and

physical forces, the cultivator possesses a “personal perspective” animated

by transpersonal interaction and “motivated to express and embody in

living acts and artifacts a humanized, cosmically rooted intelligence.”5

In this vivid image, designers consciously cultivate a shared ground

for ecological design intelligence. Design is from the Latin de signare,

which means “to trace out, define, indicate.” Too often, this tracing,

defining, and indicating has been for the purpose of exclusion rather

than inclusion. Ecological design, by infusing design itself with the

common life around us, calls us back to an inclusive circle in which all

voices are once again heard.

Community Design

As we have seen, cultivating design intelligence requires that design ed-

ucation once again become permeable to the outside world, responding

to the challenges offered by real places and adding ecology and com-

munity to its list of concerns. It also requires a recognition that design

is far too important to be left solely to designers. Design is not neutral.

It is molded by powerful political and economic forces. It is well past

time to open up the methods, products, and apparatus of design to

wider constituencies.

Ecological design literacy provides a basic foundation for shaping de-

sign decisions at all levels of scale: Should the town invest in an expen-

sive conventional sewage treatment plant, or should it consider a con-

structed wetland? What kind of lumber should I use for my house?

What sort of urban-growth policy should the city seek? These are ques-

tions that professionals have an important role in deciding, but the final

choice rests on a decision-making process that takes into account the

wider cultural and ecological context of each solution.


At the community scale, ecological design is an experiment in

democracy. Daniel Kemmis, mayor of Missoula, Montana, writes of an

issue that divided his town a few years ago. Missoula, located in a broad

mountain valley, is often subject to inversion layers during the winter.

These layers were trapping the smoke from thousands of wood stoves,

producing unacceptable levels of particulates. In this case, a renewable

local resource—wood—was causing damage to the shared airshed.

Some citizens wanted to ban wood burning; others, viewing the issue

as one of individual rights, said something to the effect of “You

mean you’re going to tell me now that I can’t go into the forest and cut

my own wood and take it home and burn it in my own living-room

fireplace?”6

As it turned out, the town opted to allow wood burning, but in a

new way. Local regulations have spurred the creation of several enter-

prises “which are profitably engaged in manufacturing clean-burning

stoves, or compressed wood pellets to burn cleanly in them, or furnace

accessories to enable commercial or institutional customers to burn

those pellets.”7 In this community design process, everyone has learned

more about pollution, managing a common airshed, and the intricacies

of wood stoves. More important, the community has learned to com-

municate and cooperate, setting a precedent for further efforts.

William Morrish, director of the Design Center for American Urban

Landscape at the University of Minnesota, has worked with many local

communities on issues of flood prevention, urban redevelopment, and

ecological restoration. He leads tours with local citizens during which

everyone—professional or not—takes photographs and makes notes.

He has invariably found the comments of the townsfolk to be rich with

local knowledge and therefore of great value in the design process.8

Since environmental impacts are rarely confined to an individual, the

reduction of such impacts typically requires that a commons be re-

claimed or created afresh. In the case of Missoula, the seemingly private

issue of burning wood in one’s stove turned out to have large-scale


effects that could be mitigated only by working within an airshed com-

mons. In other cases, a wastershed, a marsh, or a whale’s migratory

path might constitute the relevant commons.

From the fugue of local voices within a commons will emerge stories

of survival and renewal, clues to designs that will make sense in the con-

text of the whole community. Since ecological designs typically unfold

over many years or decades, it is imperative that they coevolve with the

wishes of their future stewards. It is impossible to simply walk away

from a living system as one would walk away from a freshly built sky-

scraper or house. The sheer complexity and subtlety of ecological de-

sign requires scrupulous attendance to direct experiences of place.

The kind of integrative thinking and action required for effective

ecological design is widespread among people of all ages. At the San

Domenico School in San Anselmo, California, the Ecological Design

Institute is working to implement an ecological design curriculum for

prekindergarten through twelfth grade. The curriculum emphasizes

hands-on problem solving that transcends conventional boundaries.

Katy Langstaff, the project coordinator, writes that “young people to-

day are inheriting a world of complexity beyond what a compartmental-

ized curriculum can train them for. Careers of tomorrow will require

holistic thinking, problem solving, and ethics.”9 Working with the stu-

dents at three levels of scale—watershed, campus, and on-site garden—

the project is attempting to foster an awareness of place and an appreci-

ation for the significance of design.

At Intermediate School 167 in the Bronx, children are being given

the opportunity to learn biology, ecology, and chemistry through a

hands-on restoration project, reclaiming a small patch of meadow and

wetland fronting the Bronx River and adjacent to the school. This en-

gagement with their own place provides wonderful training in ecologi-

cal design. As one of the teachers recalls:

Each session was a continual flow of excitement and energy, stemming

from the curiosity of so many engaged, young minds. Planting,


mulching, and watering became an adventure. Through activity and ob-

servation, many questions were raised. Students quickly learned about

the correspondence between the river, the insects, snakes, snails and tur-

tle eggs we found, and the sandy, loamy banks and the herbs, shrubs, and

trees we planted.

Our project also helped develop leadership and communication skills

among the sixth graders from various ethnic backgrounds. A few were

knowledgeable in horticultural techniques from agricultural experiences

in their native countries. An effort which combined landscape restora-

tion, past history, and transplanted cultures began to take root here in the

new world of the south Bronx.10

These examples show that everyone can participate in the design

process. Such participation, with its rich tangle of theoretical knowl-

edge, manual skills, and communication, is at the core of a culture of

sustainability.

Another powerful way of opening up the design process is to estab-

lish a set of indicators to which a community can easily respond. Just as

a dry reservoir provides direct and incontrovertible information about

water storage, or a fundraising thermometer at a building site tells us

how the project is progressing, we might imagine prominent meters

displayed near City Hall that showed current levels of energy or water

use. Well-chosen indicators can help form a shared awareness of the is-

sues facing a community. They can give us a way of evaluating our own

activities and understanding their wider implications. Just as indicator

species like salmon mark the health of ecosystems, indicators for sustain-

ability report on the health of human communities.

According to Sustainable Seattle, a grassroots project developing en-

vironmental indicators, good indicators share the following four fea-

tures: They are “bellwether tests of sustainability, can be understood

and accepted by the community, have interest and appeal for use by lo-

cal media, and are statistically measurable.”11 The project has identified

forty indicators for a sustainable Seattle and is in the process of carefully

documenting each one with descriptions, definitions, interpretations,


evaluations, linkages to other indicators, and a graphical display of

trends. As one project report stated, “While these indicators have not

been derived from a scientifically tested and refined model of sustain-

ability (for such models are not to be found), neither are they arbitrary,

having evolved through dialogue with people of knowledge and in-

sight.”12 The indicators are to be taken as a rough cut at the problem of

making sustainability tangible in a city facing enormous environmental

pressures. The following selection of ten of the project’s indicators

gives a taste of the process. Indicators moving toward sustainability are

marked +, and those moving away are marked –.

Environment

Wild salmon runs through local streams –

Percentage of Seattle streets meeting “Pedestrian-Friendly” criteria +

Population and Resources

Total population of King County –

Tons of solid waste generated and recycled per capita per year –

Economy

Percentage of employment concentrated in the top ten employers +

Percentage of children living in poverty –

Percentage of citizenry that can afford adequate housing –

Culture and Society

Juvenile crime rate –

Percentage of youth participating in a form of community service +

Participation in the arts +

The Sustainable Seattle indicators ground sustainability in the partic-

ular problems and opportunities facing the city, helping ordinary citi-

zens become involved in complex decision-making processes that were


once the exclusive domain of city planners, solid-waste commissioners,

economists, and other professionals. The city is currently providing a

full-time neighborhood planner to each neighborhood in the city, and

the indicators are playing an important role in local planning processes.

The notion of community sustainability indicators can be easily ex-

tended to community sustainability planning. It is often useful to begin

the planning process with a series of charettes, or intensive design work-

shops, that bring community members together with those possessing

professional design expertise. In charettes, participants are instructed to

label and illustrate cards with facts (What?), goals (Why?), or solutions

(How?). Facts provide detailed information about the community: for

example, “Fox Creek is flooding one year out of three.” Goals repre-

sent important aspirations: “The downtown core should be revital-

ized.” Solutions are possible design interventions: “Create a new kind

of agricultural zoning to protect farms threatened by development.”

When the cards are pinned to the wall, the group can begin to identify

important clusters and patterns, rearranging the cards as necessary. The

card wall provides a changeable map, a consensus of people’s beliefs,

perceptions, and ideas about a shared problem. It works best when it

can be placed in an accessible space where it can be reviewed, com-

mented on, and added to.

Other methods are just as effective. People can be asked to draw

maps of the community, labeling places of particular cultural, ecologi-

cal, or economic interest. Layers of geographical information on vege-

tation, geology, hydrology, soils, roads, land use, property lines, and so

forth can be printed on acetate sheets. Participants can then color, over-

lay, and label these sheets to create idiosyncratic maps. Computerized

geographical information systems (GIS) can even be used to perform

this work more precisely and create highly sophisticated maps for wider

circulation. For instance, reports Doug Aberley, the Nisga’a people of

northwestern British Columbia have recently purchased “state of the

art G.I.S. computer software and are now digitizing satellite images of


their territory to defend sovereignty, and aid in the stewardship of lo-

cally controlled forests, fisheries, and other resources.”13 An exciting re-

cent issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly discusses other mapping ef-

forts conducted by indigenous people around the world.14

This local knowledge can be combined with some basic ecological

accounting to provide a detailed inventory of place rich enough to an-

swer questions like these:

• What are the prevalent soil types? How healthy is the soil in this re-

gion?

• Are there any endangered species in the region?

• Is there any evidence of deleterious health effects from local indus-

try?

• How much gasoline, natural gas, electricity, solar energy, and fuel-

wood are used?

• How much food is produced locally? What types? How much of

this food is actually used locally?

• How much money is spent in the community? How much leaves

the community?

• Are there any underutilized wastes?

Meaningful indicators or specific goals emerge from this inventory

and from the charette process itself. If the community is excessively de-

pendent on oil for its winter heating needs, it may take as a goal a cer-

tain level of reduction in this use. If the community is facing serious

health risks from toxic chemicals, it may address this issue first. Com-

munity sustainability planning is an incremental process. It brings the

community to a gradually increased awareness of the flows of energy,

materials, money, and information that maintain a place. It can work

only with the active involvement of a broad range of stakeholders, from

schoolchildren to businesspeople to artists.

In the community sustainability planning process, everyone is a de-


signer. Everyone makes decisions about transportation, buildings, wa-

ter, energy, food, and waste. Since these design decisions have deep im-

plications for the health of the entire community, they are best made in

a widely participatory way. This is not to suggest that everyone can be-

come a master builder or a competent ecological engineer. However,

we can all possess a basic design literacy that allows us to participate in

the shaping of our places.

Ecological design cuts through the insularity of the various design

professions. The work of making our communities and regions sustain-

able provides a rich curriculum for all who would undertake it. As Wes

Jackson says, this work provides a major in “Homecoming.” It is nitty-

gritty work, not necessarily glamorous, but too important to the real life

of communities to be left to professional designers and other experts.

Notes

1. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built(New York: Viking, 1994), 215.

2. Thomas Fisher, “Can This Profession Be Saved?” Progressive Architecture75, no. 2 (February 1994): 84.

3. Donald Watson, “Agenda 2000: A Proposal for Leadership by the DesignProfessions,” Symposium on Sustainable Strategies for Communities and Build-ing Materials. Paper presented at conference of American Institute of Archi-tects, Seattle, October 1993. For information on post-occupancy, see Sim Vander Ryn and Murray Silverstein, Dorms at Berkeley: An Environmental Analysis(Berkeley: Univ. of California, Center for Planning and Development Research,1967). The competition for an energy-efficient office building was sponsored bythe Office of the State Architect.

4. David W. Orr, Earth in Mind (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994),110–11. See also the discussion in Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For theCommon Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment,and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 357–60.

5. Linda Groat, “Architecture’s Resistance to Diversity: A Matter of Theoryas Much as Practice,” Journal of Architectural Education 47, no. 1 (September1993): 8–9.


6. Daniel Kemmis, Community and the Politics of Place (Norman: Univ. ofOklahoma Press, 1990), 90.

7. Ibid., 91–2.8. See the publications of the Design Center for the American Urban Land-

scape, College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Univ. of Min-nesota.

9. Katy Langstaff, from a report for the Sustainable San Domenico Project,The Ecological Design Institute, 1994.

10. Diana Hernandez, “Restoration through Education/Education throughRestoration,” Restoration and Management Notes 10, no. 1 (summer 1992): 16.

11. Pamphlet from the Sustainable Seattle Indicators Project, 1993.12. Ibid.13. Doug Aberley, “Eye Memory: The Inspiration of Aboriginal Mapping,”

in Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment, ed. Doug Aberley(Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 1993), 15. Thisbook is a highly recommended introduction to the process of community map-ping.

14. “Geomatics: Who Needs It?” Cultural Survival Quarterly 18, no. 4(winter 1995).


FIFTH PRINCIPLE

Make NatureVisible

185

De-natured environments ignore our need and our potential for

learning. Making natural cycles and processes visible brings the de-

signed environment back to life. Effective design helps inform us of

our place within nature.

Sim used to surprise his architecture students with a special test. Not

about styles, building codes, or drafting techniques, the test was about

an awareness of processes in one’s home place. Simple questions: How

does the water you drink reach your kitchen sink? How many days until

the moon is full? What soil series are you standing on? From what direc-

tion do winter storms generally come in your region?1 The same stu-

dents who routinely displayed a sophisticated knowledge of current ar-

chitectural theory or computer-aided design were overwhelmed by the

test. It called for a different sort of knowledge. In the end, few students

answered more than three out of ten right.

Our environments—whether they are sprawling malls or wild

rivers—are the most powerful teachers we have. In a de-natured place,

we are likely to develop de-natured imaginations, lacking room for

Bishop pines or upswimming salmon. Robin Grossinger notes that in

the span of one century “we’ve not only destroyed the original land-

scape, but we’ve very nearly lost the collective ability to remember what

it looked like before.”2 We have culverted the creeks, paved the wet-

lands, and built on the farms, orchards, and meadows that once nour-

ished young minds. We have rendered both nature and the conse-

quences of our own technologies increasingly invisible.

Dumb design has set a complex epistemological trap for us. Many

of us live in cities where both ecological and technological processes

are hidden from our everyday awareness. The designed environment

does not reveal to us how technology supports us and how in turn it is

interconnected with the natural world. Our working days are spent in


modern buildings that are sealed from the elements. Often we can’t

even open the windows. Their design gives us few clues regarding ori-

entation, climate, the sun’s position, or seasonal change. The pipes and

cables that bring in fuel, electricity, and water are hidden from view.

During the night, food arrives and garbage is collected, all out of sight.

We don’t see the many tons of carbon dioxide that pour out of a typical

car each year. We don’t taste the toxic cocktails in our food or water.

What do we learn from this kind of “nowhere” environment? When

living and working in nowhere places becomes normal, it is no wonder

that we literally lose some of our sensitivity toward nature. Through the

daily experience of the designed environment, we learn detachment.

There are few designed-in opportunities that encourage us to care for

the environment around us.

There is a pernicious cycle at work here. As our system of food, wa-

ter, energy, waste, and sewage have grown ever more intricate and hid-

den, it has become more difficult to understand or question them. As

nature has receded from our daily lives, it has receded from our ethics.

Now we are beginning the slow work of turning this destructive cy-

cle into a regenerative one. By making nature visible again, favoring

technologies that are not hidden and that do not possess hidden conse-

quences, our imaginations are again enfolded in nature. We hunger for

the channelized creek to return to its wooded, meandering banks; we

are no longer content to buy toxic products; we act in new ways.

Design transforms awareness. Designs that grow out of and cele-

brate place ground us in place. Designs that work in partnership with

nature articulate an implicit hope that we might do the same. Designs

that call for our continuing participation and involvement offer us new

teachings day by day. Ecological design brings us back to the wider liv-

ing community, waking us again to the patterns of wind and rain, the

sources of our food, and the life-cycles of our materials. It illuminates

the very flows that sustain us. Such learning is the most important of all.

If the built environment is a powerful silent teacher, we can change

the message people get from it. It can be redesigned so that people are

richly informed about their place and the ecological processes endemic

to it. In the Bateson Building, for example, Sim and his colleagues

found that by designing with natural energy flows, they became sensi-

tive to rhythms of light and climate. We are not adapted to live or work

at temperatures or lighting levels that are uniform and constant; we are

most alive when we experience subtle cycles of difference in our sur-

roundings. By this logic, a building should itself become in Gregory

Bateson’s words, a “pattern that connects” us to the change and flow of

climate, season, sun, and shadow, constantly tuning our awareness of

the natural cycles that support all life. A wall should be not a static, two-

dimensional architectural element but a living skin that adapts to differ-

ences in temperature and light. Designing a building to save energy also

means designing a building that is sensitive to nature. The result is a

building that is better for people.

Just as we feel more alive in a room open to sunlight and fresh air

than in one closed to the elements, E. O. Wilson speculates that we

have an innate need for contact with a wide variety of species. This

need, which he terms biophilia, reminds us that we are designed to live

and adapt within nature. The biophilia hypothesis “powerfully asserts

that much of the human search for a coherent and fulfilling existence is

intimately dependent upon our relationship to nature.”3 Ecological de-

sign responds to this need by bringing an elemental awareness of natu-

ral processes and interactions into even the urban context. It makes nat-

ural processes visible and active at levels of scale from the household to

the neighborhood to the entire city.

Television nature shows, virtual reality, and books cannot substitute

for real-time learning from a natural environment. One study of cre-

ative designers showed that many of them had spent lots of time during

their childhoods playing in vacant lots in their neighborhoods. Here,

away from the all-too-carefully designed order, they could experience,

in the leftover space, weeds, bugs, and the cycle of unmanicured sea-

sons. Here they had space to watch and dream.

Our de-natured cities stifle impulses toward biophilia. We may even

187Make Nature Visible

be seeing the emergence of a new urban disease, what a psychiatrist

friend calls econoia, or fear of living things. One time, an urban woman

came as a student to the Farallones Rural Center, where residents used

composting privies, grew their own food, and lived in solar cabins. Each

day she seemed to be gone for a while and often wasn’t at meals. After

some weeks, she was asked about her absences, and she explained that

every day she drove to town to use a flush toilet at the gas station and

buy packaged food. The way we lived was “unnatural” to her.

Too often, the natural world is conceived as Nature with a capital

“N,” “out there” in remote mountain ranges, in rainforests, in the

depths of the ocean. This has allowed us to conveniently believe that

our activities can be carried out without consideration of their wider

consequences. Weaving nature back into everyday life breaks down de-

structive dichotomies between the built world and wild nature. It re-

minds us of the ecological processes and biological diversity present

even in the city. This kind of immediate, close-at-hand nature—a kind

of small “n” nature—is one that needs to pervade culture.4

When we come to participate in organic processes as a necessary and

intimate part of our lives, the awareness and motivation to protect the

larger realms of big “N” Nature will be widespread and enormously

powerful. On the other hand, if we fail to weave little “n” nature back

into the everyday environment, big “N” Nature will become an ex-

pendable abstraction confined to television documentaries. Ecological

design connects us to wider natural cycles, transforming our awareness

of our place within nature.

In the same way that natural processes have been designed out of

public view, the technology that supports urban life has been hidden.

Typically, sewage plants, garbage dumps, aboveground gas storage

tanks, slaughterhouses, and electrical generating and transmission sta-

tions are located in the poorest parts of town. Even benign technolo-

gies such as wind generators are considered a visual nuisance. We want

clean energy, but perhaps not in our backyards. We have lived for some


time now secure in the assumption that we are entitled to all the bene-

fits of technology as long as someone less powerful puts up with the

costs. This creates a strange schizophrenia in which our ideal is to con-

sume sanitized versions of both nature and technology. That is indeed

what the richer folk and nations get: a false and incomplete experience

of both nature and technology, while others suffer the consequences.

Making nature visible is a way of reacquainting us with wider com-

munities of life, but it also informs us about the ecological conse-

quences of our activities. With a conventional storm-drain system, for

instance, water quickly disappears into subterranean arteries, picking up

various toxins along the way. The water is hidden, and so are the im-

pacts of the system itself—contamination of downstream rivers or wet-

lands, altered hydrology, and decreased groundwater recharge. We can

make the drainage system both visible and ecologically functional by

letting water flow on the surface into drainage ponds like West Davis

Ponds. We can preserve wetlands and stream corridors that act as natu-

ral sponges to absorb stormwaters. The delightful thing about such a

design is that people love to watch it in action, rushing out in the rain to

watch the water flow.

All of this suggests a new kind of aesthetic for the built environment,

one that explicitly teaches people about the potentially symbiotic rela-

tionship between culture, nature, and design. It is a powerful approach,

since new ideas are learned most rapidly when they can be expressed vi-

sually and experienced directly. The landscape architect Robert L.

Thayer, Jr., has called this aesthetic visual ecology. This approach favors

designed environments that can

• help us see and become more aware of the abstractions we super-

impose on the land

• make complex natural processes visible and understandable

• unmask systems and processes that remain hidden from view

• emphasize our unrecognized connections to nature5


Many artists have found inventive ways to dramatize natural proc -

esses. Andy Goldsworthy works with simple materials—water, stones,

leaves, sticks—to visualize wind, water flow, decay, and other phenom-

ena. He speaks of his own work in this way: “Movement, change, light,

growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to

tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place,

materials and weather, the earth as my source. I want to get under the

surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material

in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it.

When I leave it these processes continue.”6 His work is an active en-

gagement with living processes.

In a parallel way, ecological design is linked to a visual ecology that

celebrates our systems of water and energy, agriculture and production.

This kind of visual ecology is emphasized in one of the Ecological De-

sign Institute’s current projects, The Real Goods Trading Company’s

Solar Living Center in Hopland, California (figures 22–27). The site

consists of twelve acres on an agricultural floodplain. The program will

include a showroom for ecological technologies, supporting facilities,

and a demonstration landscape and garden that together inform people

about the company’s products and its ecological vision.

Both the site and the program offer strong possibilities for making

natural processes visible. The silted, damaged stream that forms one

end of the site is being restored to reflect its original riparian qualities.

Constructed wetlands, ponds, and gardens fill the floodplain. The land-

scape design mimics the original variety of plant communities found in

the area. Since the planting plan is spatially related to the seasons, it

provides orienting clues to the sun’s daily and seasonal paths. Water re-

cycled from the copious on-site aquifer is a major element in the design.

It provides summer cooling for outdoor spaces, soothing background

sounds, and an animated path for visitors to follow. The site plan is a

complex interweaving of ecotones that should prove to be favorable

habitat for plants, animals, and people alike.



FIGURE 22. Site analysis diagram for Real Goods Solar Living Center

FIGURE 23. Showroom, site and surroundings


FIGURE 24. Showroom with cooling pond in front, berm, and landscaping

FIGURE 25. Pond and garden area on floodplain

FIG

UR

E 2

6. L

ands

cape

pla

n fo

r R

eal G

oods

sola

r Li

ving

Cen

ter

1. N

ativ

e w

etla

nds r

esto

ratio

n2.

Dem

onst

ratio

n ga

rden

3. P

onds

4. R

ipar

ian

rest

orat

ion

5. W

oode

d be

rm6.

P.V

. col

lect

ors

7. S

olar

oas

is8.

Sho

wro

om1

2

3

4

5

6 7

8

A building material was adapted only after strenuous consideration:

Does it support wholeness? Is it a renewable resource? What is the en-

ergy embodied in its manufacture? Are the labor practices involved in its

manufacture acceptable? Are the labor practices involved in its manu-

facture acceptable? Is it affordable? At first, cotton insulation seemed

ideal, but pound for pound, cotton uses more pesticides, damages more

soil and streams, and causes more health problems for workers than any

other crop. Materials that passed review included rice-straw bales used

for some walls, glue-laminated rafters made from locally reclaimed lum-

ber and nontoxic glues, and a host of other recycled materials.

As part of the design process, a scale model of the facility was made

and tested on a heliodon at Pacific Gas and Electric’s Pacific Energy

Center in San Francisco. The heliodon simulates the sun’s path for any

time or location, allowing designers to study natural lighting and solar

gain. The design team made a videotape recording time-lapse se-

quences of the sun’s path as it will appear to people inside the building.

When the video was shown to Real Goods president John Shaeffer, he

exclaimed, “Our employees will be lining up at 5:30 in the morning to

get to work just to experience sunrise in there!” The south-facing


FIGURE 27. “Bowstring” section of Real Goods headquarters

building steps down in segments as it moves from west to east, allowing

the morning sun to stream into high clerestory windows. The curved

roof form is designed to evenly distribute daylight. The complex

arrangements of building and landscape are designed to constantly re-

mind people of the sun’s path through the play of light and shadow and

a host of orienting elements.

In the Real Goods project, all elements—architectural forms, build-

ing materials, ecological restoration efforts, water, landscaping, path-

ways, and public areas—provide subtle, ongoing lessons in sustainabil-

ity. Even the entrance tiles are made of recycled solar cells. Like other

effective ecological designs, it sets in motion processes that will con-

tinue to teach us year after year.

Ecological design transforms awareness by making nature visible.

Spending time with ecologically designed buildings or environments,

“one [increasingly] becomes aware of processes, patterns, and relation-

ships.”7 At its best, ecological design provides concrete evidence of the

pattern that connects us to the rhythms of life and place. It awakens our

sense of belonging to a wider natural world. Ultimately, it brings us

home.

Every great epoch in human history has been linked to the simulta-

neous development of landmark designs that manifest, nurture, and re-

inforce people’s experience of their culture. Early agricultural empires

built ceremonial sacred places whose spatial arrangements mirrored the

elaborate hierarchies of their cosmology and social organization. In the

Middle Ages in Europe, cathedrals—with their richness and complex

coherence—embodied the essence and spirit of an all-encompassing

Christianity. It is impossible to imagine the Renaissance mind without

the boldness of Florence, the great city’s public squares lined with mon-

uments to a new scientific and entrepreneurial sensibility. The dawning

Industrial Age created its own aesthetic, from Joseph Paxton’s Crystal

Palace to the great steam trains.

It is central to the concept of design to embody and mirror the


dreams that create it. If our cities relegate nature to parks and desig-

nated open spaces, it is because our minds shut out nature from the rest

of life. If our most visible monuments are highways, shopping malls,

sprawling suburbs, office towers, and entertainment complexes, it is be-

cause our lives are dominated by movement, consumption, the search

for individual realization, corporate power, and mass media. Our cur-

rent environments speak louder than words. They suggest that our des-

tinies will be determined by designs, technologies, and organizations

over which we have no control. The continued destruction of nature—

our kindred forms of life—is a holocaust that may well dwarf all other

human experience. It is daily evidence of the folly we have designed for

ourselves.

Ecological design reflects new dreams that can be embodied in new

kinds of environments. These dreams are not of Armageddon nor Arca-

dia, but of a world where nature and culture, the living world and the

designed world, are truly joined, each celebrated in the image of the

other. We can create an Ecological Revolution every bit as profound as

the preceding Industrial Revolution. The pieces are well understood,

from energy efficiency and sustainable agriculture to ecological waste-

water treatment and bioregional design.

We possess the collective potential to create environments that nur-

ture both the human spirit and the more-than-human living world. The

work awaits us.

Notes

1. Leonard Charles et al., “Bioregional Quiz,” Coevolutionary Quarterly, no.32 (winter 1981): 1.

2. Robin Grossinger, “The Land Beneath the City,” Annals of Earth 12, no.2 (1994): 24.

3. Stephen R. Kellert, “The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature,”in The Biophilia Hypothesis, ed. Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson(Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993), 43.


4. The little “n,” big “N” nature distinction originated with Susan Oyama.We are using it in a somewhat different sense. See Susan Oyama, “The Concep-tualization of Nature: Nature as Design,” in Gaia 2: Emergence: The New Sci-ence of Becoming, ed. William Irwin Thompson (Hudson, N.Y.: LindisfarnePress, 1991), 171–84.

5. For the term visual ecology, see Robert L. Thayer, Jr., “Visual Ecology: Re-vitalizing the Aesthetics of Landscape Architecture,” Landscape 20, no. 2(1976): 37–43. A valuable treatment of visual ecology is provided by DavidRobinson in Making Nature Visible: The Art of Visual Ecology, a Masters ofLandscape Architecture professional report, Univ. of California at Berkeley,1993.

6. Andy Goldsworthy, introduction to Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaborationwith Nature (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990).

7. John Todd and Nancy Jack Todd, Tomorrow Is Our Permanent Address:The Search for an Ecological Science of Design as Embodied in the Bioshelter (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1980), 151.


RESOURCE GUIDE FOR ECOLOGICAL DESIGN

199

Some of the most active and innovative organizations and projects in the fieldof ecological design are listed on the following pages. Books are listed sepa-rately in the Bibliography.

For links online to these and many other resources, please visit www.ecodesignbook.com.

Arcata Marsh and Wildlife SanctuaryArcata, CAA marsh that serves as the final step in purifying Arcata’s wastewater, as well as arich bird habitat and delightful recreation spot.

Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR)ADPSR National ForumP. O. Box 9126Berkeley, CA 94709510-845-1000www.adpsr.org This wide-ranging group of designers focuses on sustainability as a core concern.

ArcosantiHC 74, P. O. Box 4136Mayer, AZ 86333928-632-7135www.arcosanti.org

200 Resource Guide for Ecological Design

Paolo Soleri, Architect. A compact intentional community in the Arizona desertconsisting of high-density dwellings and dedicated to frugal resource use.

Audubon House, The700 BroadwayNew York, NYwww.audubon.org/nas/ah/Croxton Collaborative, Architects. This ecological retrofit of a turn-of-the centuryoffice building is well documented in Audubon House, by the National AudubonSociety and the Croxton Collaborative (see Bibliography).

Boyne River Natural Science SchoolShelbourne, Ontario, Canada519-925-3913http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/boyne/Douglas B. Pollard, Architect. An ecology center for the schoolchildren of Toronto,it features excellent passive solar design and a living machine for treating waste-water.

Cathedral of Saint John the Divine1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112th StreetNew York, NY 10025212-316-7400www.stjohndivine.orgUnder the leadership of Dean James Morton, the church has undertaken manyprojects connecting spirituality and the environment.

Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food SystemsFarm and GardenUniversity of California, Santa Cruz1156 High StreetSanta Cruz, CA 95076831-459-3240http://socialsciences.ucsc.edu/casfs/Excellent research program on the ecological context of sustainable agriculture.

Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (Max’s Pot)8604 F.M. 969Austin, TX 78724

201Resource Guide for Ecological Design

512-928-4786www.cmpbs.orgInvestigates alternative building materials, the use of local resources, and ad-vanced energy and wastewater systems for buildings.

John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative StudiesCalifornia State Polytechnic University4105 West University DrivePomona, CA 91768909-869-5155www.csupomona.eduThe mission of the Lyle Center is to advance the principles of environmentally sustainable living through education, research, demonstration and community outreach.

Center for Resourceful Building TechnologyP. O. Box 3866Missoula, MT 59806406-549-7678This group does important research on the environmental impacts of building ma-terials and publishes the Guide to Resource Efficient Building Elements(GREBE) catalog.

CRATerre-EAG (Centre International de la Construction en Terre École d’Ar-chitecture Grenoble)10 Galerie des BaladinsBP 2636, F-38036Grenoble Cedex 2, France33-76-40-66-25Investigates the use of earth as a building material and works to maintain indige-nous building methods worldwide.

Cerro Gordoc/o Cerro Gordo Town ForumDorena Lake, P. O. Box 569Cottage Grove, OR 97424503-942-7720An intentional community that is keeping 90 percent of its land in open space andis building houses from wood sustainably harvested on-site.


Cob Cottage CompanyP. O. Box 123Cottage Grove, OR 97424www.cobcottage.comThis small group is reviving the art of building with cob, a straw-clay mixture.

CoHousing Company, The1250 Addison Street #13Berkeley, CA 94702510-549-9980www.cohousingco.comProvides technical assistance to groups interested in cooperative housing, in whichseveral individual dwellings share common living and eating spaces.

Congress of New Urbanism (CNU)The Marquette Building140 S. Dearborn St.Suite 310Chicago, IL 60603312-551-7300www.cnu.orgA group of planners, architects, landscape architects, engineers, developers, andothers who are trying to formulate principles for ecological city building and re-building, set standards, and share information.

Crowley Sewage Treatment PlantCrowley, LABill Wolverton, Consulting Biologist; Maders-Miers Engineering, Engineers.Wastewater for this town of eighteen thousand is treated by a wetlands system. Wa-ter flows through large ponds, two marshes, and a rock-reed filter before it is safelyreleased in a nearby bayou.

CuritibaCuritiba, BrazilFormer mayor Jaimie Lerner helped turn Curitiba into a world leader in recy-cling, public transit, ecological restoration, and green industry.

Design Center for the Urban LandscapeMetropolitan Design Center1 Rapson Hall

89 Church St. SEMinneapolis, MN 55455612-625-9000www.designcenter.umn.eduAn endowed center that investigates how design can be used to make the metropoli-tan landscape more livable and sustainable.

Ecological Design Institute, The10 Libertyship Way, Suite 185Sausalito, CA 94965415-332-5806www.ecodesign.orgProvides a comprehensive range of ecological design services, performs research,and creates educational programs.

EcoloniaInformatiecentrumPostbus 6662400 AR Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands31-046-595-295A government-sponsored experiment in environmentally sensitive solar housing.The small village features innovative use of materials and high levels of energy efficiency.

EcotrustJean Vollum Natural Capital Center, Suite 200721 NW Ninth Avenue Portland, OR 97209503-227-6225www.ecotrust.org

Environmental Building News, BuildingGreen, Inc.122 Birge Street Suite 30Brattleboro, VT 05301802-257-7300www.buildinggreen.com

Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA)Feldstrasse 36D-20357 Hamburg , Germany


+49-40-4313 49-0www.epea.com/english/introduction.htmlUnder the leadership of “green chemist” Michael Braungart, the EPEA does pio-neering research on the creation of environmentally safe chemical pathways forproducts.

Flow CityMarine Transfer StationWest Fifty-ninth Street at the Hudson RiverNew York, NYwww.avant-guardians.com/ukeles/index.htmlMierle Ukeles, Artist. This ambitious installation documents the flows of waste inthe city of New York.

Gaia InstituteCathedral of Saint John the Divine1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112th StreetNew York, NY 10025A small, innovative group of designers and biologists who undertake visionary eco-logical restoration projects and develop new ecological technologies.

Green Builder ProgramCity of AustinEnvironment and Conservation Service Department206 East Ninth Street, Suite 17.102Austin, TX 78701www.austinenergy.com/Energy%20Efficiency/Programs/Green%20Building/A series of checklists and worksheets provided by the city of Austin allows builders toassess the sustainability of their projects.

HaymountHaymount, VADuany-Plater-Zyberk (DPZ), Planners. An innovative new town featuring neo-traditional town-planning guidelines, a constructed wetland, and numerouswildlife areas.

ING BankCommunications DepartmentInternal Communications and Publications Section


P. O. Box 18001000 BV Amsterdam, The Netherlands31-020-563-9111www.ing.nlAlberts and Van Huut, Architects. Large-scale bank that uses 90 percent less en-ergy than a conventional building; has advanced daylighting features, remarkablegardens, and water sculptures; and is considered one of the most user friendly officebuildings in the world.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance27 15th St. NW, 4th Fl.Washington, DC 20005202-898-1610www.ilsr.orgProvides assistance to communities interested in becoming more self-sufficient. Haspioneered several exceptional recycling programs.

Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG)103-105 Southampton RowLondon WC1 B4H4, United Kingdomwww.itdg.orgPromotes appropriate technology in the spirit of E. F. Schumacher.

International Society for Ecological EconomicsP. O. Box 44194West Allis, WI 53214414-453-0030www.ecoeco.orgA clearinghouse for ecologists and economists seeking common ground. Publishesthe Journal of Ecological Economics.

Kalundborg Industrial EcosystemKalundborg, DenmarkA group of industrial facilities that have found ways to effectively link their flowsof energy and materials.

Ladakh Project, Thec/o International Society for Ecology and CultureP. O. Box 9745


Berkeley, CA 94709510-527-3873http://www.isec.org.uk/pages/ladakh.htmlHelena Norberg-Hodge is working to preserve traditional patterns of agriculture,building, and settlement in Ladakh, India. The group is also selectively introduc-ing some forms of appropriate technology.

Land Institute, The2440 East Waterwell RoadSalina, KS 67401785-823-5376www.landinstitute.orgWes Jackson and colleagues perform innovative research intended to create a sus-tainable prairie agriculture based on native perennial species.

Laredo Demonstration Blueprint FarmLaredo, TX512-928-4786Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, Principal Designer. The Blue-print Farm demonstrates several ecological technologies, including on-site waste-water treatment and cisterns. It also makes extensive use of recycled and local materials.

Matfield Greenc/o The Land Institute2440 East Waterwell RoadSalina, KS 67401785-823-5376www.landinstitute.orgAn attempt to create a sustainable local economy in the small Kansas town of Mat-field Green. The experiment is also a pioneering attempt to perform ecological ac-counting at the community scale.

McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry700 E. Jefferson Street, Third FloorCharlottesville, VA 22902434-295-1111www.mbdc.com


Natural Building NetworkP. O. Box 23631Eugene, OR 97402541-344-5436www.naturalbuildingnetwork.orgAn association of builders, designers, and architects working with natural build-ing materials and energy-efficient design.

Natural Step Foundation, TheAmiralitetshuset, Skeppsholmen111 49 Stockholm, Swedenwww.naturalstep.orgAn innovative project that helped hundreds of Sweden’s leading scientists reach aconsensus on environmental issues. The results have been summarized in a beauti-ful, illustrated document distributed to every household in Sweden.

The Nature Conservancy4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100Arlington, VA 22203-1606703-841-5300www.nature.org

O2www.o2.orgA European network of innovative product designers and ecological designers.

Oasis Biocompatible Products5 San Marcos Trout ClubSanta Barbara, CA 93105805-967-3222www.shopnatural.comProvides technical information on reclaiming graywater (water from showers andsinks).

Ocean Arks International (OAI)10 Shanks Pond RoadFalmouth, MA 02540508-548-8161


www.oceanarks.orgJohn Todd, Nancy Jack John, and associates have built innovative ecological waste-water treatment systems in Providence, Rhode Island; Frederick, Maryland; andother locations.

One Planet Living (North America)Ottawa, Canada613-371-0070819-827-6312www.oneplanetliving.orgA joint partnership of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the BioRegional Devel-opment Group created to help disseminate sustainability information worldwide.

Pacific Energy CenterPacific Gas and Electric Company851 Howard StreetSan Francisco, CA 94103415-973-2277www.pge.comThis demonstration center for energy-efficient technologies also provides assistanceto architects interested in testing the energy performance of their designs.

Permaculture

Permaculture Drylands InstituteP. O. Box 156Santa Fe, NM 85704www.permaculture.net/

Permaculture Resarch Institute, TheP. O. Box 1Tyalgum NSW 2484, Australiawww.permaculture.org.au

Regenerative Design Institute and Permaculture Institute of Northern Califor-nia, TheP. O. Box 923Bolinas, CA 94924


415-868-9681regenerativedesign.orgAn international movement in sustainable agriculture and whole systems design.Offers intensive two-week courses that immerse students in a framework closely re-lated to that of ecological design. The institutes listed are just three of the dozens ofpermaculture organizations located worldwide.

The Solar Living Institute and Real Goods Trading Company Solar Living Cen-terP. O. Box 83613771 S. Highway 101Hopland, CA [email protected] showcase for the Real Goods product line of ecological technologies. The head-quarters will be off the grid, generating its own energy, and features innovativelandscaping.

Resource Renewal InstituteFort Mason CenterBuilding DSan Francisco, CA 94123415-928-4050www.rri.orgA group working toward creating a “green plan,” or strategic environmentalplan, for the United States. Publicizes existing green plans in Canada, Denmark,the Netherlands, and other countries.

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)1739 Snowmass Creek RoadSnowmass, CO 81654970-927-3851www.rmi.orgThis institute does excellent research on energy efficiency and energy policy. Theirheadquarters is a masterpiece of passive solar design.

Schumacher CollegeThe Old PosternDartington, Totnes


Devon TQ9 6EA, United Kingdomwww.schumachercollege.org.ukOffers short courses by internationally renowned teachers on topics of relevance toecological design.

SITE (Sculpture In the Environment)25 Maiden LaneNew York, NY 10038212-285-8120www.siteenvirodesign.comA group of architects and artists designing buildings and landscapes that fusestructure and nature.

Seeds of ChangeP. O. Box 15700Santa Fe, NM 87506505-983-8956www.seedsofchange.comAn organic seed company that specializes in preserving genetic variability and biodiversity. Seeds of Change sponsors an excellent annual conference on “bio -neers,” people working to regenerate ecosystems and create restorative forms of business.

Society for Ecological Restoration285 W. 18th Street, Suite 1Tucson, AZ 85701520-622.5485www.ser.org An international society for those involved in ecological restoration and ecosystemmanagement. Publishes the essential Restoration & Management Notes.

Stensund Wastewater AquacultureStensund Folk CollegeS-619 00 Trosa, Sweden46-0156-16490stensund.nu/aquaBengt Warne, Architect. Features an excellent ecological wastewater treatment fa-cility that is partly run by the students.


Sustainable Seattle1402 Third Avenue, Suite 1220Seattle, WA 98101206-622-3522www.sustainableseattle.orgA grassroots group that monitors the health of the Seattle area while promoting andenvisioning sustainable alternatives.

Urban Ecology582 Market Street, Suite 1020San Francisco, CA 94104415-617-0161www.urbanecology.orgCurrently working on a major sustainability study of the San Francisco Bay Area.The group publishes a newsletter on ecological cities, The Urban Ecologist.

Urban Habitat436 14th St. #1205Oakland, CA 94612510-839-9510www.urbanhabitat.orgA project that addresses issues of environmental justice. It publishes the journalRace, Poverty, and the Environment.

U.S. Green Building Council1015 18th Street, NW, Suite 508Washington, DC 20036202-82-USGBC or 828-7422www.usgbc.org

Village HomesDavis, CAMichael and Judy Corbett, Developers. A beautifully landscaped cluster of solarhomes. Features copious fruit trees, surface drainage, and wonderful commonsspaces.

West Davis PondsDavis, CA


An artfully contoured drainage retention basin. Its miniature islands providehabitat for dozens of bird species.

Whidbey InstituteP. O. Box 57Clinton, WA 98236360-341-1884www.whidbeyinstitute.orgThis educational organization bridges environmental and spiritual concerns.

Wildcat Creekc/o California Natural Resources Foundation1250 Addison Street #107Berkeley, CA 94702510-848-2211Ann Riley has been working on a grassroots effort to restore Wildcat and San PabloCreeks in North Richmond, California. The design will provide high levels of floodcontrol and numerous recreational amenities.

Wildlands Project, TheP. O. Box 455Richmond, VT 05477Ph. 802-434-4077Fax 802-434-5980www.twp.orgThe project is working on a long-term biodiversity recovery plan for North Amer-ica. It has developed sophisticated land-use maps to document its vision.

Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation InitiativeUnit 200, 1240 Railway AveCanmore, Alberta, T1W 1P4Canada403-609-2666800-966-7920www.y2y.net

Yuba Watershed Institute21481 Casey Ranch


Nevada City, CA 95959916-478-0817A grassroots forest stewardship project that has made excellent use of geographicalinformation systems (GIS) to jointly manage Bureau of Land Management lands.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

215

Aberley, Doug, ed. Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment.Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 1993. This in-formative guide explains the use of community-based mapping techniquesfor understanding bioregions.

———, ed. Futures by Design: The Practice of Ecological Planning. Gabriola Is-land, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 1994. An accessible anthol-ogy on ecological planning methods.

Adey, Walter. Dynamic Aquaria: Building Living Ecosystems. San Diego: Aca-demic Press, 1991. A wonderful handbook for building aquatic microcosms.

Alexander, Christopher, et al. A Pattern Language. New York: Oxford Univ.Press, 1977. This design classic examines the patterns that make for goodbuilding at levels of scale ranging from furniture details to cities.

———. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979. Thethemes of A Pattern Language are further developed.

———. The Nature of Order. Berkeley, Calif: The Center for EnvironmentalStructure, 2003–4. An extended meditation on the patterns of wholenesswithin nature and design.

Allen, T. F. H., and Thomas W. Hoekstra. Toward a Unified Ecology. New York:Columbia Univ. Press, 1992. An overview of ecology from a scale-linkingperspective.

Altieri, Miguel. Agroecology: The Scientific Basis of Alternative Agriculture.Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987. An integration of traditional farmingwith contemporary ecological science.

Badiner, Allan Hunt, ed. Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and

Ecology. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990. Collection of essays linking Buddhistawareness to ecological awareness.

Bailey, Robert G. Eco-Region Based Design for Sustainability. New York:Springer, 2002.

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books,1972. An investigation of evolution and the marks it has left on the humanmind: the patterns that connect our cognitive and cultural processes to natu-ral processes.

Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books,1990. A beautiful meditation on the role of humans in planetary evolution.

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Fran-cisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977. A farmer, poet, and tireless advocate for ap-propriate scale examines the transition from family farms to agribusiness.

———. The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. SanFrancisco: North Point Press, 1981. Extraordinary essays on farming and sus-tainability. Berry’s books cannot be recommended highly enough.

Botkin, Daniel B. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-firstCentury. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990. An exploration of complexityand ecology.

Briggs, John. Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos: Discovering a New Aesthetic ofArt, Science, and Nature. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. A lavishly il-lustrated presentation of the work of artists and scientists taking their inspi-ration from fractals and chaos theory.

Cajete, Gregory. Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education.Durango, Colo.: Kivaki Press, 1994. An inspired examination of place-basedapproaches to education.

Calatrava, Santiago. Dynamic Equilibrium: Recent Projects. Zurich: Architec-tural Publishers, 1992. Remarkable designs from an architect-engineerdeeply inspired by natural form.

Calthorpe, Peter. The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and theAmerican Dream. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993. A percep-tive study of ecologically sensitive approaches to town planning. Clearly andsimply presented.

Canfield, Christopher, ed. Report of the First International Ecological City Con-ference. Berkeley: Urban Ecology; Dorena Lake, Ore.: Cerro Gordo TownForum, 1990. Short summaries of talks given at the conference. Good intro-duction to ecocities.

Chahroudi, Day. “Buildings as Organisms.” In Soft-Tech, edited by J. Baldwinand Stewart Brand, 40–5. London: Penguin Books, 1978. Discussion of cli-mate control utilizing three new materials based on natural analogues.

216 Bibliography

Coates, Gary J., ed. Resettling America: Energy, Ecology, and Community. An-dover, Mass.: Brick House, 1981. A comprehensive anthology on local self-reliance.

Costanza, Robert, ed. Ecological Economics: The Science and Management ofSustainability. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1991. One of the betterbooks on the new ecological economics. Presents theory and useful casestudies.

Cowan, Stuart R. “Evaluating Wholeness,” Resurgence 225 (July/August2004).

Daly, Herman E., and John B. Cobb, Jr. For the Common Good: Redirecting theEconomy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future.Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. Fundamental ideas on building a sustainableeconomy responsive to issues of ecology and equity.

Diamond, Irene, and Gloria Feman Orenstein, eds. Reweaving the World: TheEmergence of Ecofeminism. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990. An ex-cellent anthology on ecofeminism, which connects ecological and feministconcerns.

Duany, Andres, and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Towns and Town-Making Princi-ples. New York: Rizzoli, 1991. An interesting attempt to adapt traditionaltown-planning principles to the contemporary context.

Eagan, David J., and David W. Orr, eds. “The Campus and Environmental Re-sponsibility,” special issue of New Directions for Higher Education, no. 77(spring 1992). A series of case studies on student-led, campuswide environ-mental audits.

Ecological Design Project, The. Ecological Design: Inventing the Future. NewYork: The Ecological Design Project, 1994. Videocassette. This hour-longvideo provides a clear overview of ecological design.

Etnier, Carl, and Björn Gutterstam, eds. Ecological Engineering for WastewaterTreatment. Gothenburg, Sweden: Bokskogen, 1991. Proceedings from afruitful Swedish conference on ecological wastewater treatment. Covers awide range of systems, from living machines to constructed wetlands.

Fathy, Hassan, Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt.Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1973. The story of an attempt to build acommunity with local labor and materials.

Fiedler, Peggy L., and Subodh K. Jain, eds. Conservation Biology: The Theoryand Practice of Nature Conservation, Preservation, and Management. NewYork: Chapman & Hall, 1992. A good anthology on methods for preservingbiological diversity.

Fisk, Pliny, “Bioregions and Biotechnologies: A New Planning Tool for StableState Economic Development.” Austin: Center for Maximum Potential

217Bibliography

218 Bibliography

Building Systems, 1983. This highly recommended report offers a visionaryapproach to bioregional-level planning.

Forman, R. T. T. Landscape Ecology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1986. Asolid introduction to the field of landscape ecology, which treats human dis-turbances in the context of ecological processes.

Frosch, Robert A., and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos. “Strategies for Manufactur-ing.” Scientific American 261, no. 3 (September 1989). A good earlyoverview of industrial ecology.

Fukuoka, Masanobu. The One-Straw Revolution. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press,1978. Classic approach to organic agriculture.

Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.A discussion of artists who infuse their work with community, ecological,and spiritual dimensions.

Goldsworthy, Andy. Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature. NewYork: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. A visionary artist who works with ice, leaves,rocks, and whatever else is at hand to create ephemeral, biodegradable art.

Gordon, David, ed. Green Cities: Ecologically Sound Approaches to UrbanSpaces. Montreal: Black Rose, 1990. Compendium of ideas on ecologicalcities.

Grumbine, R. Edward. Ghost Bears: Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis. Washing-ton, D.C.: Island Press, 1992. Biodiversity and land-use issues are high-lighted by the example of the endangered grizzly bear.

Hammer, Donald A., ed. Constructed Wetlands for Wastewater Treatment: Mu-nicipal, Industrial, and Agricultural. Chelsea, Mich.: Lewis, 1989. A valu-able encyclopedia of constructed wetlands.

Harrison, Helen Mayer, and Newton Harrison. The Lagoon Cycle. Ithaca: Cor-nell Univ., 1985. Documents an extraordinary, ongoing ecological art projectthat encompasses everything from ancient water systems in Sri Lanka to newkinds of aquaculture to meditations on reclaiming damaged agriculturallands.

Harte, John, et al. Toxics A to Z: A Guide to Everyday Pollution Hazards. Berke-ley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1991. A clear introduction totoxic substances, including a long reference section on the most commonforms.

Hawken, Paul. The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. NewYork: HarperCollins, 1993. A regenerative vision of business that outlines away to properly account for ecological costs within our existing system ofcommerce.

Hough, Michael. City Form and Natural Processes: Towards an Urban Vernacu-

lar. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984. Examines the prospects for in-corporating natural processes in an urban setting.

Hull, Fritz, ed. Earth & Spirit: The Environmental Dimension of the SpiritualCrisis. New York: Continuum, 1993. A rich collection of essays connectingecology and spirituality.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. A study ofthe diminishing returns of technological systems beyond a certain scale.

Jackson, Wes. New Roots for Agriculture. San Francisco: Friends of the Earth,1980. An appraisal of the prospects for sustainable agriculture.

———. Becoming Native to This Place. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky,1994. Thoughts on what it would require for Americans to truly become na-tive to their adopted place.

Jackson, Wes, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Colman, eds. Meeting the Expectationsof the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship. San Fran-cisco: North Point Press, 1984. A valuable collection of essays on sustainableagriculture.

Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969. Presentsclear arguments for cities that are more self-reliant.

Jantsch, Eric. The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implicationsof the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980. Anidiosyncratic discussion of self-organization and its social implications.

Johansson, Allan. Clean Technology. Boca Raton, Fla.: Lewis, 1992. Clear ac-count of pollution reduction and elimination techniques.

Johansson, Thomas B., et al. Renewable Energy: Sources for Fuels and Electricity.Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993. An authoritative reference on renew-able energy.

Katz, Michael, William P. Marsh, and Gail Gordon Thompson, eds. Earth’s An-swer: Explorations of Planetary Culture at the Lindisfarne Conferences. NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977. A seminal collection of thoughts about planetarysurvival.

Kauffman, Stuart A. Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolu-tion. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993. A demanding study of the deeproots of coevolution and biodiversity. A keystone of the complex systems literature.

Kaza, Stephanie. The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees. New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1993. Beautiful meditations on trees, with accompanyingwoodcuts. Rich and rewarding.

Kemf, Elizabeth, ed. The Law of the Mother: Protecting Indigenous Peoples inProtected Areas. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1993. A collection of case

219Bibliography

studies on the biosphere reserve concept, which attempts to meet the needsof indigenous people while protecting biodiversity.

Kemmis, Daniel. Community and the Politics of Place. Norman: Univ. of Okla-homa Press, 1990. A wise book on reviving local economies and town-hallpolitics written by the mayor of Missoula, Montana.

Korten, David. The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. SanFrancisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006.

Ladakh Project, The. Ecological Steps Towards a Sustainable Future. Bristol,England: The Ladakh Project, 1991. A progress report on Helena Norberg-Hodge’s alternative development project in Ladakh, a region in northernIndia.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1948.Eloquent argument for a “land ethic” capable of preserving ecosystems.

Lewin, Roger. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos. New York: Macmillan,1992. An examination of the deep structure of biodiversity as revealed in his-torical extinction events.

Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. New York:Bantam Books, 1990. An overview of Gaia theory by one of its founders.

Lovins, Amory. Soft Energy Paths. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Foundationof least-cost end-use analysis. Demonstrates conclusively that matching en-ergy production to use results in enormous increases in efficiency.

Lyle, John Tillman. Design for Human Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use, andNatural Resources. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985. A thoroughstudy of ecological design at the landscape scale.

———. Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. A compendium of ecological design methods andstrategies.

Macy, Joanna. The World as Lover, the World as Self. Berkeley: Parallax Press,1991. A powerful union of Buddhism, deep ecology, and general systems the-ory.

Mandelbrot, B. B. The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: W. H. Freeman,1982. An exploration of fractal geometry, full of clever examples and specula-tions.

Mander, Jerry. In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and theSurvival of the Indian Nations. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991. Asearch for an ethics of technology.

Margolin, Malcolm. The Earth Manual: How to Work on Wild Land WithoutTaming It. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1985. A clear and beautiful discussionon land stewardship.

220 Bibliography

Margulis, Lynn, and Dorion Sagan. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of MicrobialEvolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. A history of life on Earth,emphasizing the role of bacteria in evolution.

Matilsky, Barbara. Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations andSolutions. New York: Rizzoli, 1992. Catalog for a traveling exhibit of pro-foundly inspiring ecological art by artists who are integrating ecologicalrestoration, natural flows, and plants into their work. Truly a primer on mak-ing nature visible, it is highly recommended.

Mazria, Edward. The Passive Solar Home Book. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press,1979. A guide to the principles of solar architecture.

McHarg, Ian. Design with Nature. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press,1969. A seminal text on ecological design. Passionate, beautifully illustrated,and clear, it is mainly concerned with the landscape scale.

McKenzie, Dorothy. Design for the Environment. New York: Rizzoli, 1991. Pres-ents a wide range of environmentally sensitive design examples, from textiledesign to product design to villages.

Meadows, Donella, et al. Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse andEnvisioning a Sustainable Future. Post Mills, Vt.: Chelsea Green, 1992. Aclear diagnosis of the global environmental crisis.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: GeneralSynthesis, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005.

Mitsch, William J., and S. E. Jørgensen, eds. Ecological Engineering: An Intro-duction to Ecotechnology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1989. Textbook-level introduction to ecological wastewater treatment and other applicationsof ecological engineering.

Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future. Wash-ington, D.C.: Island Press, 1990. A comprehensive introduction to design-ing for self-sufficiency based on the principles of permaculture, or “perma-nent agriculture.”

Morris, David, and Irshad Ahmed. The Carbohydrate Economy: Making Chemi-cals and Industrial Materials from Plant Matter. Washington, D.C.: In-stitute for Local Self-Reliance, 1992. Examines the possibility of transform-ing industrial chemicals from a petroleum base to a nontoxic, carbohydratebase.

Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins and Transformations, and ItsProspects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. The definitive histori-cal and philosophical study of the city.

———. The Myth of the Machine. 2 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,1967–70. A masterful and comprehensive study of technology and culture.

221Bibliography

Nabhan, Gary Paul. The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago In-dian Country. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982. An elegant study oftraditional Papago agriculture.

———. Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conser-vation. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989. A rich study of traditionalagriculture and the role of seed propagation in preserving biodiversity.

Nabokov, Peter, and Robert Easton. Native American Architecture. New York:Oxford Univ. Press, 1989. A beautifully illustrated study of indigenous archi-tecture in North America.

National Academy of Engineering. Technology and Environment. Washington,D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989. Good collection of technical articleson an industrial ecology theme.

National Audubon Society and Croxton Collaborative, Architects. AudubonHouse: Building the Environmentally Responsible, Energy-Efficient Office.New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. A detailed case study of an ecologicallysound renovation in New York City.

National Park Service. Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design. Denver: Na-tional Park Service, 1993. A clear and practical introduction to sustainabledesign with special reference to the Park Service’s ongoing initiatives.

Nicolis, Gregoire, and Ilya Prigogine. Exploring Complexity: An Introduction.New York: W. H. Freeman, 1989. An introduction to complex systems re-quiring relatively little mathematics.

Nilsen, Richard, ed. Helping Nature Heal: An Introduction to EnvironmentalRestoration. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1991. A nontechnical overview of theart of restoration.

Norberg-Hodge, Helena. Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh. San Fran-cisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991. Profoundly moving study of the debilitatingeffects of forced modernization in Ladakh, a state in northern India.

Norgaard, Richard. Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a Coevolu-tionary Revisioning of the Future. New York: Routledge, 1994. A dense studyof sustainability’s philosophical foundations.

Noss, Reed F., and Allen Y. Cooperrider. Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protectingand Restoring Biodiversity. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994. Soundstrategies for maintaining biological diversity.

Odum, Howard T. Environment, Power, and Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971. A prescient book that has influenced a generation of ecolog-ical engineers with its call to work with the self-designing tendencies ofecosystems.

222 Bibliography

Olkowski, Helga, et al. The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in theCity. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1979. A nuts-and-bolts account of apartially self-sufficient house developed in Berkeley during the 1970s.

Orr, David W. Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a PostmodernWorld. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1992. A courageous and chal-lenging vision of an ecological curriculum predicated on place. Indispensa-ble; the pedagogical equivalent of ecological design. Features a wonderfulreading list for developing ecological literacy.

Platt, Rutherford H., Rowan A. Rowntree, and Pamela C. Muick, eds. The Eco-logical City: Preserving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity. Amherst: Univ. ofMassachusetts Press, 1994. A collection of papers on weaving nature into theurban landscape.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialoguewith Nature. New York: Bantam Books, 1977. Explains limits of conven-tional thermodynamics; demonstrates that open systems can maintain com-plex structures far from equilibrium.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89, no. 3 (1 February 1992). Thisspecial issue devoted to industrial ecology, a collection of papers from an im-portant colloquium, provides an overview of the field.

Roszak, Theodore. The Voice of the Earth. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.Proposes a new kind of “ecopsychology.”

Sachs, Wolfgang. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power.London: Zed Books, 1992. This series of essay-length definitions of key de-velopment terms brilliantly critiques conventional notions of “develop-ment.”

———, ed. Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict. London: ZedBooks, 1993. A sobering study of the limitations of the current global envi-ronmental discourse.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. Human Scale. New York: Putnam, 1982. A study of the influ-ence of scale on design and governance.

Schneider, Stephen H., and Penelope J. Boston, eds. Scientists on Gaia. Cam-bridge: MIT Press, 1991. An overview of the science behind Gaia theory.

Schumacher, E. F. Small Is Beautiful. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. A deeplysane book about the insanities of economics and a way out. Launched theappropriate-technology movement.

Schwenk, Theodor. Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Waterand Air. New York: Schoken Books, 1976. Beautifully illustrated study of thedynamics of water and air.

223Bibliography

Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Woman, Ecology and Development. London: ZedBooks, 1988. A devastating discussion of science as power in the context offorest policy in India.

———. Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology.London: Zed Books, 1993. Examines the link between cultural and biologi-cal diversity.

Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990.In a series of elegant essays demonstrating the poet’s touch, Snyder maps thegrowth of culture outward from a deep sense of place.

Soule, Judith D., and Jon K. Piper. Farming in Nature’s Image: An EcologicalApproach to Agriculture. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1992. An explo-ration of the Land Institute’s attempts to create truly sustainable agricultureby mimicking the structures and functions of healthy ecosystems.

Sprin, Anne Whiston. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design.New York: Basic Books, 1984. A study of nature in the city.

Thayer, Robert L., Jr. Gray World, Green Heart: Technology, Nature, and theSustainable Landscape. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. A valuablephilosophical examination of different attitudes toward technology andlandscapes.

Thompson, William Irwin. Gaia: A New Way of Knowing: Political Implicationsof the New Biology. Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfarne Press, 1987. Exam-ines the cultural implications of Gaia theory.

———, ed. Gaia 2: Emergence: The New Science of Becoming. Hudson, N.Y.:Lindisfarne Press, 1991. Explores the significance of self-organizing systems.

Tibbs, Hardin. “Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry.”Whole Earth Review, no. 77 (winter 1992). Absolutely critical contribution tothe emerging paradigm of industrial ecology, which calls for nothing lessthan the redesign of our industrial system so that pollution is eliminated andmaterials throughput and energy use are minimized.

Todd, Nancy Jack, and John Todd. From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Princi-ples of Ecological Design. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1994. An eloquentexploration of ecological design principles. Examples include aquaculture,living machines, urban farming, and bioshelters. Essential reading.

Van der Ryn, Sim. Design for Life. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2005.———. The Toilet Papers. Sausalito, Calif.: Ecological Design Press, 1995. A de-

tailed discussion of composting toilets.Van der Ryn, Sim, and Peter Calthorpe. Sustainable Communities: A New De-

sign Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs, and Towns. San Francisco: Sierra Club

224 Bibliography

Books, 1991. A collection of essays on ecological design at town and cityscales.

Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Orderand Chaos. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. A history of complex- systems research at the Santa Fe Institute.

Wells, Malcolm. Gentle Architecture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. A delight-ful examination of low-impact building techniques.

Wilson, Edward O. The Diversity of Life. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press,1992. A passionate account of the emergence of biodiversity on Earth andthe prospects for its maintenance.

———, ed. Biodiversity. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988. Acollection of essays on the theme of biodiversity, with particular emphasis onpolicy issues.

World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future.New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987. A key text in the north-south sustain-ability dialogue.

Worldwatch Institute. State of the World. Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Insti-tute. An annual wrap-up of the latest trends and statistics in environmentalissues. Very informative.

Worster, Donald. The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecologi-cal Imagination. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993. Important collectionof essays on environmental history and sustainability.

Yeang, Ken. Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design. London, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. A comprehensive and visionary approach to large-scaleecological design projects.

225Bibliography

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

227

Sim Van der Ryn founded the University of California Berkeley’s eco-

logical design program and has been a professor of architecture there

for thirty-five years.

He was appointed California State Architect in the 1970s and created

programs of energy-efficient design and renewable energy for the

mainstream.

His work has been widely recognized through national awards and

honors. Fine Home Building magazine selected the Integral Urban

House as one of twenty-five most important houses in America citing it

as the “Birth Of Green.” Residential Architecture Magazine honored

him as 2005 Architect of the Year. He is one of few architects ever se-

lected as a Rockefeller Scholar.

He is the founder of the Eco-Design Collaborative, the non-profit

Ecologic Design Institute, and the Center for Regenerative Design at

the College of Marin. He is a frequent public speaker and the author of

seven books, including his latest, Design For Life.

Website: vanderrryn.com or e mail: [email protected]

Stuart Cowan is a General Partner of Autopoiesis LLC, which offers

design, development, and finance services internationally for large-scale

sustainability projects. He was a Transaction Manager at Portland

Family of Funds, a community investment bank committed to green

real estate projects and sustainable businesses. He served as Research

Director at Ecotrust, where his team developed the Conservation

Economy framework for bioregional sustainability (www.conservation

economy.net). He received his doctorate in complex systems from the

University of California, Berkeley and has taught at Berkeley, New Col-

lege of California, Antioch College, Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and

Portland State University.

228 About the Authors

INDEX

229

Aberley, Doug, 179–180Aborigines, 44Acid rain, 52, 104Adaptation, integration and, 34Agriculture, 26–27, 44, 79–81,

112–113Air conditioning, 97Air quality, 139–140, 175Alexander, Christopher, 7, 46Algae, 147Aloe vera, 133Altamount Landfill, 118Aluminum, 116American Institute of Architects

(AIA), 29, 115–116Ant Farm, 155Ants, 150A Pattern Language and the Timeless

Way of Building, 46Aphids, 157Aquaculture, 43–44, 136–137Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary,

140–141Architecture, 44, 170–172Arkansas, 119–120Arks, 44

Artificial wetlands, 92, 140–141Arts and Crafts Movement, 44Asnaes, 135–137Atelier, 170Atriums, 97Audubon building, 29Australia, 44Automobile industry, 114–115Autonomous House, 44Awareness, 185–189

Bacteria, 134, 147Baer, Steve, 93Bahouth, Peter, 112–113Bailey, Robert G., 8Balinese aquaculture and rice terrac-

ing, 43–44Banyus, Janine, 4Bateson, Gregory, 29–30Bateson Building, 95–97, 187Bears, 161–162Bechtel, 154Beddington Zero Energy Develop-

ment (BedZed), 9–10Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction, 151,

152

Benzene, 133Berry, Thomas, 84Berry, Wendell, 128Biodiversity, 36, 156–164. See also

DiversityBiodynamic agriculture, 44Biogas, 118Biomes, 98Biomimicry, 4Biophilia hypothesis, 5, 187–188Bioregional design, 47Bio Regional Development Group,

9–10Bioremediation, 131–134Blended value, sustainability and, 12Bloodstream, 134Bodies, fractal forms and, 56Botkin, Daniel, 163Brand, Stewart, 155, 171Braungart, Michael, 10–11Brick, 116British coastline, 53–56Buffer zones, 160Building skins, 44Butter, 83Butterfly effect, 87

Cadmium, 132–133Cajete, Gregory, 77–78California Department of Transporta-

tion, 30California Waste Exchange, 134Calthorpe, Peter, 46, 47Camels, 94cAMP, 144Capital, 12–13Capitalism, 19–20Carbon dioxide, 135Carbon monoxide, 36, 133Cardboard, 113Caribou, 78–79Catastrophic uncertainty, 159

Cement, 39–40, 89–91, 136Census data, toilets and, 71Center for Maximum Potential Build-

ing Systems (Max’s Pot), 47, 97–99, 135

Chahroudi, Day, 44, 95Chair example, 111–112Chaos theory, 86–87Charettes, 172–173, 179Chemical languages, 150Chia Jiang, 137–138Chin, Mel, 132–133Chlorine, 147Christianity, 19–20Chrysanthemums, 133Clean-burning stoves, 175Clear cutting, 79Climate, vegetation and, 139–140Clivus Multrum, 70–74Clothesline paradox, 93Coevolution of nature and culture,

126Collaboration, wikis and, 4Collapse, 13Collins, Josh, 58–59Colonialism, 19–20Comfort, desire for, 109Commerce, ecology of, 105Community design, 174–181Competitions, 172Complexity

biodiversity and, 158–159ecology and, 157intelligence webs and, 150self-designing systems and, 149sustainability and, 85–88

Complex systems, science of, 86–88Composting toilets, 70–74Concrete, 116, 135Confucians, 137–138Connectivity, 161–162Consequences, awareness of, 189

230 Index

Conservation, natural capital deple-tion and, 37–38

Conservation Economy framework, 6Constraint maps, planning and, 59–

60Constructed ecosystems, 46, 92Constructed wetlands, 92, 140–141Context, design strategy and, 42Conventional design, 41–43Cooling, 90, 98, 134, 139–140Core reserves, 160Corridors, 160–162Cotton, 194Cows, 83Cradle-to-cradle design, 10–11Crime, 178Croxton Collaborative, 29Crystal Palace, 195Cultivators, designers as, 173–174Cultural Survival Quarterly, 180Culture, 42, 82–83, 126, 164Cyanobacteria, 130

Damon, Betsy, 5Decomposers, 130–131Deforestation, 39–40, 113Demographic uncertainty, 159Deserts, 88–91, 94Design, defined, 24Design Center for American Urban

Landscape, 175Designers as cultivators, 173–174Design for disassembly, 114–115Design for Life, 14Design with Nature, 45–46, 126–127“Design with Nature” principle

biodiversity conservation and, 8composting toilets and, 73continued applicability of, 4overview of, 125–127sustainability and, 14

Detoxification, wetlands and, 36, 92

Dialogue, scale and, 61–65Diamond, Jared, 13Directory of Industrial Recyclers and

Listing of Hazardous Wastes Avail-able for Recycling, 134

Disassembly, 114–115Diversity

biological, 36, 156–164biophilia hypothesis and, 187–188design strategy and, 42self-designing systems and, 148traditional agriculture and, 80wetlands and, 139

DNA for sustainability, 11Dramstad, Wenche E., 8The Dream of the Earth, 84Duany, Andres, 46Duckweed, 143Dumb design, 26, 109–110, 185–186Dymaxion houses, 44École des Beaux-Arts, 170

Ecological accountingcomposting toilets and, 72–73design strategy and, 41flows and, 117–121increasing use of, 3–4Intelligent Products System and, 11life-cycle analysis and, 111–117Mierle Ukeles and, 120–121overview of, 103–111sustainability gap and, 12

Ecological context, 42Ecological design, 33–34, 41–43Ecological Design Institute, 176, 190–

195Ecological engineering, 145–146Ecological footprint, 9–10Ecological Revolution, 196Ecological sustainability, 20–21, 22–23Ecology, 129–130, 131–132, 157, 189–

190

231Index

The Ecology of Commerce: A Declara-tion of Sustainability, 47, 105

Economic accounting, 103–104, 105Economy, linearity of, 128Ecoregion-Based Design for Sustain-

ablilty, 8Ecosystems, 46, 142–152, 160Ecotones, 152–156Ecotrust, 6Edges, 152–156Education, 89–91, 170–174, 176–177,

187–188Efficiency, importance of, 109–110Electricity, 39–40, 91, 117Ellesmere Islands, 78–79Embodied energy, 115–116Emergence, 150Emerson, Jed, 12Emissions, 104Employment, 178Energy

Bateson Building and, 95–97design strategy and, 41ecological accounting and, 107–108ecological design and, 38efficiency and, 109–110industrialization and, 108Lindisfarne Association Center and,

92Ojai Foundation School and, 91resource flows in San Francisco and,

117–118taxation and, 104

Energy accounting, 108–109Energy service companies (ESCOs),

110Entropy, 108–109, 145Environmental awareness, 185–186Environmental crisis, 24–25, 34Environmental indicators, 177–181Environmental Protection Agency,

113–114

Environmental Protection Encour-agement Agency (EPEA), 115

Environmental returns, optimizationof, 12–13

Environmental uncertainty, 159Ephemeralization, 44Epistemologies, 24, 29Equilibrium, succession and, 158Erosion, 38–40Ether, 113Ethics, nature and, 186Eucalyptus monoculture, 80–81Euclidean geometry, 56“Everyone is a designer” principle, 4,

73, 169–174, 174–181Evolution, 35–36, 125Externalities, 103–104Extinctions, 156

Farallones Institute Rural Center, 30,44, 45, 172, 188

Farming. See AgricultureFarming: A Hand Book, 128Farnsworth House, 27–28Fisher, Thomas, 172Fish farms, 43–44, 136–137Fisk, Pliny, 47, 97Flooding, 34, 38, 138–139Flow City, 120Fly ash, 135, 136Food, 119–120, 127–137, 139Food webs, 158Forestry, 39–40, 80–81Forman, Richard T.T., 8The Fountainhead, 170Fractal geometry, 7, 56–61Fractal root systems, 57–58Fractuals, 56Fragmentation, 161–162Frenay, Robert, 4Fresh Kills Landfill, 120Fuller, Buckminster, 35, 44

232 Index

Gandhi, 46Gap analysis, 12–13, 160–161Garadh Dubh Staonaig, 77Garbage, 117–118, 120–121Garden cities, 44Gasoline combustion, 107–108, 118Geddes, Patrick, 44Genetic diversity, 80, 159Genetic engineering, tomatoes and,

112Geographical information systems

(GIS), 179–180Geometry, 7, 53–56, 56–61Germany, 26, 114–115Glass, 116“Glass Bridge,” 121Global cycles, scale linkage and, 51Global ecological management, 21–22Global warming, 39–40, 104Goa 2100 project, 9Goldsworthy, Andy, 47, 190The Great Turning: From Empire to

Earth Community, 13–14Great Wave, 61Green Building Council, 3–4Green Gulch Farm, 71Greenhouse gases, 104–105Greenhouses, 146–147Green infrastructure, 63–64Grizzly bears, 161–162Groat, Linda, 173–174Grossinger, Robin, 185Groundwater, wetlands and, 139Grumbine, R. Edward, 159–160

Habitat, wetlands and, 139Habitat loss, 39–40, 161–162Hawken, Paul, 47, 105Hazardous chemicals. See Toxic

chemicalsHeating of water, 143–144Heavy metals, 131–133

Heirloom crops, 80Heliodons, 194Hendrix College, 119–120Hokusai’s Great Wave, 61House, Freeman, 84Housing, 39–40, 178Howard, Ebenezer, 44Hudson River, 121Hyacinths, 131–132, 143Hyperaccumulators, 132–134

Impacts, 111–112Implementation, 172Inclusion, 174Indicators, 177–181Indicator species, 177Indigenous knowledge, 77, 78–79, 83–

85, 180Indonesia, 111Industrial ecology, 46, 129–130, 131–

137Industrialization, energy and, 108Inputs, 106–107Integral Urban House, 45, 70Integration, adaptation and, 34Intelligence, cultivation of, 169–174Intelligence webs, 149–150Intelligent Products System, 11,

115Intermediate School 167, 176–177Inuit caribou hunting, 78–79Inversions, 175Iona, 77

Jackson, Wes, 103, 141–142, 181Jupiter, 145Jurisdiction, scale and, 52

Kaiser, 154Kalkoven, J.T.R., 162Kalundborg, Denmark, 135–137Kellert, Steven, 5

233Index

Kemmis, Daniel, 175Knowledge bases, 42Koch curves, 55–56Korten, David, 13–14Kwaakiutl culture, 79

Ladybird beetles, 157Landfills, 118, 120–121, 132–133Land Institute, 46, 141–142Landscape Ecology Principles in Archi-

tecture and Land Use Planning, 8Langstaff, Katy, 176Languages, chemical, 150Laredo Demonstration Blueprint

Farm, 97–99, 100Leadership in Energy and Environ-

mental Design (LEED), 3–4Learning, 43, 73–74, 89–91Lewin, Roger, 150Life-cycle analyses, 103–104, 111–117Lighting, 97, 194Lindisfarne Association Center, 91–92Linkage. See Scale linkageLiving capital, 12–13Living filters. See BioremediationLiving Water Garden, 5Local knowledge, 77, 78–79, 83–85,

180Logging, 79Lovins, Amory, 46, 109Lyle, John Tillman, 47

Machine metaphor, 27–28, 43“Making nature visible” principle, 5,

73–74, 185–196Man and the Biosphere program, 160Mander, Jerry, 78Mankiewicz, Paul, 57–58Mapping, 179–180Marshes, 34, 147, 153Massachusetts Institute of Technol-

ogy, 170

Material flows, 38, 41Materials accounting, 110–111, 116Matrix, nature as, 127Matter, materials accounting and,

110–111Mattole watershed, 84Max’s Pot, 47, 97–99, 135McDonough, William, 10–11McHarg, Ian, 45–46, 59–60, 126–127Meadowcreek Project, 119–120“Media Flow Wall”, 121Mesquite, 98Metals, heavy, 131–133Mexico, tomatoes and, 112–113Microclimate, 93–94Microcosms, 142–143Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 5Mining, 132–134Missoula, Montana, 175Molds, 144Mollison, Bill, 46Monocultures, 148Morphogenesis, 150Morris, William, 44, 175Mosquito abatement, 58–59Moss as living filter, 133–134Mumford, Lewis, 44, 97

Nabhan, Gary, 79–80Narmada Valley Project, 22National Geographic, 26–27Native Americans, 77–78Native species, 93–94Natural capital, depletion of, 37–38Natural gas, 118Natural Step Foundation, 64Nature

coevolution of with culture, 126,164

as design model, 23, 43ethics and, 186evolution as design in, 35–36

234 Index

geometry of, 58importance of involvement with,

187–189scale linkage and, 51–52visibility of, 5, 73–74, 185–196waste as food in, 127–129

Nature Conservancy (TNC), 8The Nature of Order, 7–8Needham, Joseph, 137Negawatts, 110Negentropy, 145New Alchemy Institute, 44, 172New Directions for Higher Education,

118–119Nisga’a people, 179–180Nonequilibrium, 145Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protec-

tion Act, 162, 163Norton, Bryan, 156–157Nurseries, wetlands as, 139Nutrition, resource flows and, 119

Oberlin College, 5Ocean Arks International ecological

wastewater treatment plant, 146–147

Oceans, 118Oceanside Treatment Plant, 118Odum, Howard T., 139, 145–146Oil embargo, 45Oil pollution, 93, 113Ojai Foundation School, 89–91Olkowski, Bill and Helga, 45Olson, James D., 8The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 14One Planet Living initiative, 9–10Organic architecture, 44Organic farming, 27, 46Organization, 7Orr, David W., 20, 23, 86, 119–120, 173Ostriches, 94Our Common Future, 21, 22

Ouroboros House, 44Outputs, 106–107Oxygen, 130Ozone depletion, 104, 112, 113

Pacific Gas and Electric, 117, 118, 194

Packaging industry, 26Participation, 43, 170“Passage Ramp”, 120Passive solar energy, 92Pasteurization, 30Pathogens, 147Patriarchal culture, 19–20Pattern language, 6Paxton, Joseph, 195Pedestrians, 46, 178Permaculture, 46Pesticides, 25, 112–113, 135, 194Photosynthesis, 107–108Photovoltaic arrays, 91Pig’s Eye Landfill, 132–133Pisé, 90Planning, 25–26, 59–60, 62Plants, 57–58, 131–134, 139–140, 146–

147Plastic, 113, 116Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth, 46Policy, necessity for change and, 5–6Pollan, Michael, 14Pollution

design strategy and, 41home furnaces and, 23industrial ecology and, 46Protozoic era and, 130scale and, 52unutilized wastes as, 135

Polycultures, 148Population, 19–20, 178Poverty, 178Powell, John Wesley, 58Prairie agriculture, 141–142

235Index

Predictions, butterfly effect and, 87Project Wild, 46Protozoic era, 130Pulse: The Coming of Age of Systems

and Machines Inspired by LivingThings, 4

Rammed earth, 90Rand, Ayn, 170The Real Goods Trading Company,

190–195Recycling. See also Bioremediation

in Germany, 26, 114–115Ojai Foundation School and, 91resource flows in San Francisco and,

118waste exchange and, 134

Rees, William, 121Refineries, 135–137Regeneration, 37–38Regional surveys, 97–99Regulations, 71, 72Renewable energy, 12Resource flows, 117–121Respiration, 130Responsibility, 74Retention ponds, 140Revival Field, 133“The Revolution in American Agri-

culture,” 26–27Rice, 43–44Richardson, Lewis, 53Richardson Bay, 152–156Ripening, 113Riverdale, 84Robèrt, K.-H., 64Rock beds, 97Rocky Mountain Institute, 46Rocky Mountains, 46, 162, 163Rodale, Robert, 37Royal Commission on the Future of

the Toronto Waterfront, 62–64

Sachs, Wolfgang, 22Salmon, 84, 178San Domenico School, 176San Francisco, 58–59, 117–118Sanitation, 120–121Saprophytes, 130–131Satellite images, 22, 85–86Satellites, Star Wars and, 85–86Scale, 42, 61–65, 99–100Scale linkage

butterfly effect and, 87fractal geometry and, 56–58natural processes and, 51–52, 58–61necessity to work with, 53–56

Scale pollution, 135Schumacher, Fritz, 46Science Professionals for Social Re-

sponsibility (CSPSR), 85–86Scientific American article, 129–130Scientific knowledge, 19–20, 64,

80–81Scotland, 77Seeding, 148–149, 151Self-design, 7, 142–152Self-similarity, 56Service products, 115Sewage treatment, 23, 34, 91, 118Shaeffer, John, 194Shiva, Vandana, 88, 164Silver waste, 131–132Sinclair, Cameron, 4Skins, building, 44Slime molds, 144Small is Beautiful, 46Snyder, Gary, 78Social returns, 12–13Soft Energy Paths, 46, 109Soil, 36, 39, 43–44, 89–91, 139Solar Living Center, 190–195Solutions grow from place

complexity and, 85–88composting toilets and, 72

236 Index

continued applicability of, 3designing for place and, 88–100local efforts and, 81–83local knowledge and, 83–85traditional cultures and, 77–81

Spider plants, 36, 133Spiral scroll waves, 151, 152Stabilization, 38–40Standardization, 25–26, 89Star Wars, 85–86Steel, 35, 116Steiner, Rudolph, 44Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 29–30Stewardship, 37–38, 86, 180Storm drains, 82Studio system, 170–172Stuttgart, Germany, 140Succession, equilibrium and, 158Sulfur, 136Sulfur dioxide, 135Sustainability

complexity and, 85–88culture of, 82–83design connection and, 23–30designing for place and, 88–100local efforts for, 81–83local knowledge and, 83–85in traditional cultures, 77–81two views of, 19–23Vancouver and, 121

Sustainability crisis, 43Sustainability gap, 12–13Sustainable Seattle, 177–180Symmetry, scale linkage and, 56System science, 42, 86–88

Taoists, 137–138Taxation, 26, 104Technological sustainability, 20–22,

47Technology, 19–20, 23–24, 188–189Templates, 25–26, 89

Terracing, 43–44Thayer, Robert L, Jr., 47, 140, 189–

190Thermodynamics, 108–109, 149Thich Nhat Hanh, 111–112Thinkcycle, 4Tibbs, Hardin, 131, 135Tidal marshes, 34, 59, 147, 153Todd, John, 44, 46, 147, 149Tomatoes, 112–113Tornadoes, 145Toronto waterfront, 62–64Touch Sanitation, 120“Towards a Symbiotic Architecture,”

23–24Toxic chemicals, 41, 113, 126, 129, 134Toxic pollution, defined, 135Traditional knowledge, 23, 77–81Transparency, 6Trash, 117–118, 120–121Trees, 39. See also BioremediationTurner Foundation, 112–113

Ukeles, Mierle, 47, 120–121Uncertainties, ecosystem stability

and, 159–160Unified approaches, 5United States Green Building Coun-

cil (USGBC), 3–4Universities, resource flows at, 118–

119University of Arizona, 90–91University of British Columbia, 121University of California at Santa

Cruz, 46Urban Ecology, 82Urban Releaf program, 139U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 160–

161Utilities, negawatts and, 110Utopian view of sustainability,

21–22

237Index

Vancouver, 121Van Der Rohe, Mies, 27–28Van der Ryn, Sym, 14, 47, 69–74Varda, Jean, 155Vegetation, 57–58, 131–134, 139–140,

146–147Visibility of nature, 5, 73–74, 185–196Visual ecology, 189–190Waste, 34, 107–108, 127–137Wastewater treatment,

bioremediation and, 131–133constructed ecosystems and, 46constructed wetlands and, 140–141ecological engineering and, 146–147fractal root systems and, 57–58

Water, 23, 118, 143–144Water engineering, ancient China

and, 137-138Water hyacinths, 131–132, 143Water purification, 139Water resources planning, 58, 60Watershed restoration, 12, 59–60, 62–

64Watson, Donald, 172–173Watts, Alan, 155

Waves, self-similar, 61Wellesley-Miller, Sean, 23–24, 44West Davis Ponds, 140Wetlands, 36, 92, 139–141, 146–147Whole Earth Catalog, 155, 171Wikis, 4Wildlands Project, 8Wildlife corridors, 160–162Willow trees, 39Wilson, E.O., 5, 156, 187Wood, 116, 175Workshops, 172–173, 179Worldchanging Web site, 4World Commission on Environment

and Development, 21World Resources Institute, 111World Wildlife Fund, 9–10Worster, Donald, 157–158Wright, Frank Lloyd, 44Wuxi, China, 131–132

Y2Y initiative, 8–9Yanomamö, 43

Zhabotinskii reaction, 151, 152

238 Index

Island Press Board of Directors

Victor M. Sher, Esq. (Chair)Sher & LeffSan Francisco, CA

Dane A. Nichols (Vice-Chair)Washington, DC

Carolyn Peachey (Secretary)Campbell, Peachey & AssociatesWashington, DC

Drummond Pike (Treasurer)PresidentThe Tides FoundationSan Francisco, CA

Robert BaenschDirector, Center for PublishingNew York UniversityNew York, NY

William H. MeadowsPresidentThe Wilderness SocietyWashington, DC

Merloyd Ludington LawrenceMerloyd Lawrence Inc.Boston, MA

Henry ReathPrinceton, NJ

Will RogersPresidentThe Trust for Public LandSan Francisco, CA

Alexis G. SantTrustee and TreasurerSummit FoundationWashington, DC

Charles C. SavittPresidentIsland PressWashington, DC

Susan E. SechlerSenior AdvisorThe German Marshall FundWashington, DC

Nancy Sidamon-EristoffWashington, DC

Peter R. SteinGeneral PartnerLTC Conservation Advisory ServicesThe Lyme Timber CompanyHanover, NH

Diana Wall, Ph.D.Director and ProfessorNatural Resource Ecology LaboratoryColorado State UniversityFort Collins, CO

Wren WirthWashington, DC